USDA announces 1st update to poultry inspection rules since 1957

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Thursday the first new regulations for poultry inspection since 1957.

The rules, which were finalized Thursday, require plants to conduct their own testing and sampling of birds for the first time for food-borne pathogens such as campylobacter and salmonella, at least twice during the production process. The USDA will continue to conduct its own tests as well.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the changes would result in 5,000 fewer food-borne illnesses connected to poultry products every year.

“Bottom line, this is a significant opportunity to bring the inspection system for poultry into the 21st century,” Vilsack said.

He said the agency had taken into account concerns about worker safety and wouldn’t increase processing-line speeds as initially proposed and which the poultry industry had wanted. The speed will be capped at 140 birds per minute, rather than 175.

But under the new rules, fewer federal inspectors will be required to eyeball chicken carcasses at plants as they fly by on hooks in the slaughter line, a change that’s drawn criticism from food safety groups.

Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, said the USDA’s concession on line speeds wasn’t a meaningful victory.

The “one USDA inspector left on the slaughter line under this new rule will still have to inspect 2.33 birds every second, an impossible task that leaves consumers at risk,” Hauter said in a statement.

She added that the new regulations effectively privatize the poultry inspection process by allowing companies to police themselves.

“With the poultry industry standing to gain financially due to increased production and fewer regulatory requirements, the plan is a gift from the Obama administration to the industry, one that will undermine consumer and worker safety, as well as animal welfare,” Hauter said.

The industry welcomed the news that the USDA would implement the regulations at last after a years-long bureaucratic process. But it had lobbied hard to increase line speeds, and the National Chicken Council, a trade group, expressed disappointment Thursday that speed limits would stay the same.

“It is extremely unfortunate and disappointing that politics have trumped sound science, 15 years of food and worker safety data and a successful pilot program with plants operating at 175 birds per minute,” National Chicken Council President Mike Brown said in a statement.

Brown said the cap of 140 birds per minute also went against global precedent.

“Broiler plants in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Belgium and Germany, among others, all operate at line speeds of 200 or more birds per minute,” he said.

Workplace safety groups spent two years advocating against the USDA’s proposal to increase line speeds, arguing that it could endanger the workers who must sort and trim inedible carcasses. Minorities, immigrants and women make up most of the low-wage workforce at poultry plants.

In 2008, The Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy newspaper, published a series of articles about dangerous working conditions at House of Raeford, a North Carolina poultry processor. The series highlighted the failure of federal regulators to crack down on plants that violated workplace safety rules.

The cap on line speeds the USDA announced Thursday is a testament to the power of workers’ voices in Washington, said Catherine Singley Harvey, the manager of the economic policy project for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group.

“The fact that the administration prevented a bad situation from becoming worse was a result of collective advocacy, so we’re pleased to see that USDA and the Department of Labor recognized the human costs of chicken production, and we look forward to working with both agencies in continuing to improve worker safety,” Singley Harvey said.

Vilsack said the agency “took very seriously” the feedback it had received over the last several years about the proposal. He said he was confident that reducing the number of inspectors on the slaughter line would free them to perform more important tasks elsewhere in plants, such as random pathogen testing and monitoring for cleanliness.

Federal inspectors shouldn’t be doing quality control, and the new regulations will give that responsibility to the plant’s workers, where it belongs, he said.

“We know a lot more about what makes food unsafe today than we did in 1957,” he said.

“The theory was that if there was a bruise or some indication that the bird was damaged in some way that that necessarily indicated that it would be a food safety risk,” Vilsack said. “The fact that a bird is bruised does not mean that it poses a food safety risk. . . . The reality is those birds may be equally safe in terms of consumption if cooked properly.”

Argentina is declared in selective debt default after talks fail

WASHINGTON -- Standard & Poor’s declared Argentina in selective default Wednesday afternoon after it failed to reach an agreement with American holdout creditors in the final hours of negotiations. It marked Argentina’s second default in 13 years.

Despite the passing of a midnight deadline, both sides were expected to continue talking to resolve the default. Some last-minute maneuvers on Tuesday and Wednesday by Argentina and others outside the lawsuit to avoid default fell through. Many economists expect the default to produce dire financial consequences for Argentina, which is already in a recession.

“Unfortunately, no agreement was reached and the Republic of Argentina will imminently be in default,” the court-appointed mediator, Daniel Pollack, said in a statement. “The ordinary Argentine citizen will be the real and ultimate victim.”

A lengthy legal battle and a month of negotiations through Pollack had produced no resolution to the demand by the holdout creditors, led by billionaire Paul Singer and his hedge fund NML Capital, that they be paid in full for the $1.5 billion in Argentine bonds they purchased in 2001.

Although talks on Tuesday night had offered some prospect of an agreement as the two sides spoke face-to-face for the first time, all efforts proved fruitless Wednesday, according to Pollack’s statement.

Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof remained defiant at a news conference after the negotiations ended Wednesday.

“We aren’t going to sign any agreement that would jeopardize the future of Argentines,” Kicillof said, speaking at Argentina’s consulate in New York.

NML put the onus on Argentina for the failure in a statement. “During this process, the Special Master proposed numerous creative solutions, many of which were acceptable to us. Argentina refused to seriously consider any of them, and instead chose to default,” it said.

The Association of Argentine Banks, a group of private banks, voted to offer the holdout creditors $250 million on behalf of the government in exchange for a stay, according to several news reports. A representative of Banco Macro, a member of the association, didn’t reply to an email seeking confirmation. A representative of the association attended the negotiations Wednesday.

Separately, a group that owns euro-denominated Argentine bonds had requested Tuesday that the judge in the case, Thomas Griesa, suspend talks. Griesa denied the motion.

It was Griesa who triggered the possibility of a default when he ruled that Argentina had to pay the holdout creditors in full, then blocked the country’s plan to make a payment June 30 to other creditors who’d agreed to accept a 70 percent discount on the debt they held. Griesa said Argentina had to pay all the creditors at the same time. When Argentina missed the June 30 payment, that started the clock running on a 30-day grace period that ended at midnight Wednesday.

Some outside the lawsuit have disagreed with Griesa’s order. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney general in New York, filed a brief in an appeals court in 2012 supporting Argentina, arguing that Griesa misinterpreted the requirement that all bondholders be treated equally.

“He probably did not foresee the full ramifications of his decision,” Anna Gelpern, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Georgetown University professor, said of Griesa. “It is possible that in his desire to put pressure on Argentina, he has created consequences that he did not expect, both for his own court room and for Argentina and other market participants.”

The International Monetary Fund also expressed concern over the lawsuit’s consequences.

“One of the implications of this Argentina episode is that there is much more uncertainty as to how we’ll be able to restructure debt for other countries in the future,” Olivier Blanchard, the director of the IMF’s research department, told a new conference last week in Mexico City, according to an IMF transcript.

The battle has been good politically for Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at least in the short term, said Eugenio Aleman, an Argentine and senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.

“A default, in the Argentine nationalistic scheme of things, will be seen as standing up to the vultures,” said Aleman, referring to the term Kirchner calls the holdouts. But, he added, “The benefits will probably be very short-lived because people will then figure out that things are getting worse, and the government will not be able to finance itself.”

The case has ramifications for other countries to resolve restructured debt cases, said Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a religious financial-restructuring group in Washington that lobbies for poor nations.

For example, Grenada and a Taiwanese bank are in a similar debt lawsuit in New York, and Griesa’s ruling on Argentina will likely affect that outcome, LeCompte said.

“Argentina decided it was better to default than to settle,” said LeCompte Wednesday evening. “Because of the precedent this case sets there are a lot of losers and few winners.”

Texas market numbers inch up 6.6 pct from 2013

The number of farmers markets in Texas has grown slightly in the past year, an uptick that still ranks the state third for the most growth.

A statement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture marketing service Saturday shows Texas has 195 farmers markets this year, up from 183 in 2013.

That's a 6.6 percent increase, trailing only Louisiana's 12.1 percent increase and Tennessee's 20.2 percent increase for biggest percentage growth in the past year.

California leads the country with 764 farmers markets, and New York is second with 638.

Ten years ago, Texas had 101 farmers markets.

Nationwide there are 8,268 markets, an increase of 76 percent since 2008. The USDA statement says that reflects continued growth and demand in every region of the country.

Economy, hiring up in July, but flat wage growth dampens cheer

By Kevin G. Hall McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Employers added 209,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate ticked up a notch to 6.2 percent , the government said Friday in a jobs report that did not surprise.

The report. a bit softer than recent months, marked the sixth straight month that non-farm payroll hiring exceeded 200,000, something not seen since 1997.

The numbers don’t change the view of a recovery gaining stream, especially when taken together with Wednesday’s report that the economy grew at at annual rate of 4 percent from April to June.

Government statisticians revised earlier estimates of May and June hiring, adding a combined 15,000 for the prior two months.

Email: khall@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @KevinGHall.

Argentina is declared in selective debt default after talks fail

WASHINGTON -- Standard & Poor’s declared Argentina in selective default Wednesday afternoon after it failed to reach an agreement with American holdout creditors in the final hours of negotiations. It marked Argentina’s second default in 13 years.

Despite the passing of a midnight deadline, both sides were expected to continue talking to resolve the default. Some last-minute maneuvers on Tuesday and Wednesday by Argentina and others outside the lawsuit to avoid default fell through. Many economists expect the default to produce dire financial consequences for Argentina, which is already in a recession.

“Unfortunately, no agreement was reached and the Republic of Argentina will imminently be in default,” the court-appointed mediator, Daniel Pollack, said in a statement. “The ordinary Argentine citizen will be the real and ultimate victim.”

A lengthy legal battle and a month of negotiations through Pollack had produced no resolution to the demand by the holdout creditors, led by billionaire Paul Singer and his hedge fund NML Capital, that they be paid in full for the $1.5 billion in Argentine bonds they purchased in 2001.

Although talks on Tuesday night had offered some prospect of an agreement as the two sides spoke face-to-face for the first time, all efforts proved fruitless Wednesday, according to Pollack’s statement.

Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof remained defiant at a news conference after the negotiations ended Wednesday.

“We aren’t going to sign any agreement that would jeopardize the future of Argentines,” Kicillof said, speaking at Argentina’s consulate in New York.

NML put the onus on Argentina for the failure in a statement. “During this process, the Special Master proposed numerous creative solutions, many of which were acceptable to us. Argentina refused to seriously consider any of them, and instead chose to default,” it said.

The Association of Argentine Banks, a group of private banks, voted to offer the holdout creditors $250 million on behalf of the government in exchange for a stay, according to several news reports. A representative of Banco Macro, a member of the association, didn’t reply to an email seeking confirmation. A representative of the association attended the negotiations Wednesday.

Separately, a group that owns euro-denominated Argentine bonds had requested Tuesday that the judge in the case, Thomas Griesa, suspend talks. Griesa denied the motion.

It was Griesa who triggered the possibility of a default when he ruled that Argentina had to pay the holdout creditors in full, then blocked the country’s plan to make a payment June 30 to other creditors who’d agreed to accept a 70 percent discount on the debt they held. Griesa said Argentina had to pay all the creditors at the same time. When Argentina missed the June 30 payment, that started the clock running on a 30-day grace period that ended at midnight Wednesday.

Some outside the lawsuit have disagreed with Griesa’s order. Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney general in New York, filed a brief in an appeals court in 2012 supporting Argentina, arguing that Griesa misinterpreted the requirement that all bondholders be treated equally.

“He probably did not foresee the full ramifications of his decision,” Anna Gelpern, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Georgetown University professor, said of Griesa. “It is possible that in his desire to put pressure on Argentina, he has created consequences that he did not expect, both for his own court room and for Argentina and other market participants.”

The International Monetary Fund also expressed concern over the lawsuit’s consequences.

“One of the implications of this Argentina episode is that there is much more uncertainty as to how we’ll be able to restructure debt for other countries in the future,” Olivier Blanchard, the director of the IMF’s research department, told a new conference last week in Mexico City, according to an IMF transcript.

The battle has been good politically for Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at least in the short term, said Eugenio Aleman, an Argentine and senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.

“A default, in the Argentine nationalistic scheme of things, will be seen as standing up to the vultures,” said Aleman, referring to the term Kirchner calls the holdouts. But, he added, “The benefits will probably be very short-lived because people will then figure out that things are getting worse, and the government will not be able to finance itself.”

The case has ramifications for other countries to resolve restructured debt cases, said Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a religious financial-restructuring group in Washington that lobbies for poor nations.

For example, Grenada and a Taiwanese bank are in a similar debt lawsuit in New York, and Griesa’s ruling on Argentina will likely affect that outcome, LeCompte said.

“Argentina decided it was better to default than to settle,” said LeCompte Wednesday evening. “Because of the precedent this case sets there are a lot of losers and few winners.”

Congress approves highway funding fix at last minute, but the problem isn’t solved

WASHINGTON -- Hours before the federal government was set to begin reducing payments to states for road and bridge projects, Congress seemed likely to approve a temporary fix Thursday that would maintain funding through the middle of next year.

But in some ways, the damage already had been done.

States were bracing for a drop in payments during the height of construction season. And Congress’ inability to agree on a long-term funding solution has wreaked havoc on state transportation departments, which plan their projects years, not months, in advance.

“We’ve got a short-term fix,” said David Parkhurst, staff director and general counsel for the National Governors Association’s Office of Federal Relations, “but the long-term challenges remain.”

And given the broader paralysis in Washington on a whole range of issues, many observers worry that Congress will just run out the clock again.

“My fear is it will still be a politically intractable issue next year,” said James Burnley, transportation secretary during the Reagan administration. “That’s incredibly disruptive to states.”

Lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives had plenty of warnings. They’d known for two years that the current transportation bill, MAP-21, would expire at the end of September. They’d known for months that the federal highway trust fund would go broke by summer’s end.

They’d known for a month that the Department of Transportation was prepared to ration payments to states beginning Friday.

Yet state transportation departments, business groups and construction and engineering companies watched for weeks as the House and Senate dueled over whether the highway fund patch would end in December or next May, or what budgetary offsets it would include or not include.

“That’s not a good sign for coming together on long-term comprehensive legislation,” said Joshua Schank, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington policy group.

Schank that lawmakers are avoiding the elephant in the room.

“They might as well fight over a gas tax,” he said.

The federal taxes that support the highway trust fund _ 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel _ have not been raised since 1993, nor were they indexed to inflation. The crisis began six years ago, when Congress began tapping general revenues to maintain the program. It’s taken more than $50 billion to keep the fund solvent, and the hole gets deeper every year.

Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Associations, have pushed for a gax tax increase. Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., proposed raising it by 12 cents to restore its purchasing power.

But lawmakers in both parties are reluctant to raise taxes, especially during an election year. President Barack Obama has not endorsed that approach, either. He has pitched a plan to close corporate tax loopholes to supplement the highway fund, but that’s only a one-time source of revenue, not a permanent cure.

“You could scotch tape, year after year, various sources of revenue and accounting games,” Burnley said. “But that’s no way to manage your infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, states already have begun cutting back because of the uncertainty. Missouri, for example, used to add 400 to 500 new highway projects a year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Today, it’s comfortable only adding 25.

The uncertainty at the federal level has forced states to get creative. Many have raised their own gas or sales taxes to pay for transportation projects. Others have turned to tolls or issued bonds.

Some argue that the federal program should be scrapped and the gas tax money returned to the states for them to spend as they see fit. But states have their limits, and governors are among the strongest supporters of maintaining a federal role in transportation.

“They can only do so much,” Parkhurst of the governors association said of the states. “They can’t foot the bill for everything.”

Lawmakers: U.S. restrictions on Venezuelan officials too little

Bogotoa -- The U.S. State Department rolled out travel and visa restrictions on Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations. But South Florida lawmakers say the sanctions don’t go far enough.

Read more at the Herald: http://hrld.us/1uUwVYJ