Former USDA official: Discrimination ‘systemic and institutionalized’

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With help from Helena Bottemiller Evich and Catherine Boudreau

FORMER USDA OFFICIAL: DISCRIMINATION ‘SYSTEMIC AND INSTITUTIONALIZED’: Discrimination, sexual harassment, abuse and mismanagement of civil rights complaints have been pervasive at the Agriculture Department for decades, particularly at the U.S. Forest Service, Lesa Donnelly, vice president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, is expected to tell the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during a hearing this morning.

Whistleblowers say a culture of reprisal exists at USDA against those who report civil rights violations, which deters the filing of formal complaints. Further, agency investigations, if conducted, are often mismanaged and rarely result in the accused being held accountable, they charge.

“This is systemic and institutionalized,” Donnelly told MA on Wednesday. She was a Forest Service administrator in California from 1978 to 2002. In 1996 she filed a class-action lawsuit against the agency on behalf of 6,000 women, alleging a continuing pattern of sexual harassment, hostile work environment and reprisal. It led to a consent decree under which the courts monitored the Forest Service through 2006. In August 2014, a group of eight women filed a separate complaint against the Forest Service alleging similar problems — the first step in what could become another class-action.

The alleged problems are said to reach the highest levels of USDA. The agency’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, which handles discrimination and harassment complaints, had an unusually high number filed against its own officials, according to a May 2015 letter to President Barack Obama from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Between November 2009 and September 2014, according to the letter and USDA officials, more than 50 percent of 231 complaints filed against senior USDA managers had not been investigated within the 180-day time frame required by law.

Joe Leonard, USDA’s assistant secretary for civil rights and one of four witnesses slated to testify on Thursday, was expected to say that his office has made “profound strides” in its handling of complaints, according to an advanced copy of his testimony.

The hearing on USDA is House Oversight’s latest in a series examining potential misconduct by federal employees and senior management officials, including at the National Parks Service (under the Department of the Interior) and EPA. Pros, stay tuned for our coverage of the hearing.

HAPPY THURSDAY, DEC. 1! Welcome to Morning Ag, where your host would like to welcome in the month of December with a song by The Decemberists. Now, let’s commence to coordinate our sights on agriculture policy. You know the deal: thoughts, news, tips? Send them to [email protected] or @jsonhuffman. Follow the whole team at @Morning_Ag.

NESTLÉ FIGURES OUT HOW TO SLASH SUGAR IN A BIG WAY: No one’s going to lay a finger on your Butterfinger — but it may soon have 30 or even 40 percent less sugar without tasting any different, thanks to a breakthrough by Nestlé. The world’s largest food company on Wednesday announced that it has pioneered a new way to restructure sugar crystals to maximize the sweetness detected on the tongue before a person swallows that bite of chocolate (along with all of its calories). The innovation means the company can use less sugar, with no need for artificial sweeteners to make up the difference — a crucial innovation as global pressure mounts to reduce sugar in diets.

How Nestlé — which has pledged to cut sugar by 10 percent across its portfolio — was able to re-engineer the shape and structure of crystals is covered by some 10 patents, according to Stefan Catsicas, Nestlé’s chief technology officer, who was in Washington this week.

“It is quite a complicated process,” Catsicas said, noting that the technology is a result of transdisciplinary research. Nestlé has roughly 6,000 employees and nearly $2 billion dedicated to R&D each year. “It’s really the science of food materials. What has led us to do this is the decision to go back to fundamentals.”

What about cost? “The research that goes into it is expensive, but at the end it’s the same sugar,” Catsicas explains. “It’s not a different molecule that’s more or less expensive. Basically what happens here is that we replace sugar with less sugar.” The company says it expects to have the new sugar rolled out across confectionary products starting in 2018.

CONNER PREDICTS A FARM BILL FARMERS WILL LIKE: If Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, really is a contender for the Agriculture secretary post, as many suggest, he showed on Wednesday how he might fight for the agriculture industry’s interests against challenges from taxpayer groups and environmentalists. In a panel discussion that also included representatives from the Heritage Foundation and the Environmental Working Group, Conner asserted that the overwhelming turnout of rural Americans for President-elect Donald Trump and his campaign against regulatory overreach by the Obama administration means the 2018 Farm Bill should be “very pro-farmer,” reports Pro Agriculture’s Catherine Boudreau.

The agriculture industry is girding for battle, as various groups and lawmakers are expected to attack the next Farm Bill by again trying to split off the nutrition title, require greater conservation practices in return for subsidies and make large cuts to the crop insurance program.

“At the end of the day, this will have to be a Farm Bill that farmers themselves are enthusiastic about, given the [congressional] leadership in place and the incoming administration,” Conner said at the National Press Club event, which was sponsored by the Farm Foundation Forum. The chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture committees, Pat Roberts and Mike Conaway, represent large agricultural districts in Kansas and Texas, he noted.

“That doesn’t mean that somehow taxpayers or other groups will get stomped on, but the drivers of this bill are going to have to be farmers for it to move forward,” Conner said. Pros, read the rest of Boudreau’s article here.

PERDUE DRESSED FOR AG SEC: Speaking of prospective Agriculture secretaries, when former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue showed up at Trump Tower in New York City for a meeting with the president-elect on Wednesday, he was certainly dressed for the part. Reporters staked out in Trump Tower’s glistening gold lobby noted that Perdue marched in wearing a tie with tractor designs on it!

After the meeting, Perdue told reporters that Trump didn’t offer him a Cabinet position, per the pool report. “We talked about ... agriculture, productivity and needing new trade deals to make sure we can sell all the products we can grow around the world,” Perdue said. “And it was a very beneficial meeting. I found him to be very understanding of what the issues are.”

Perdue said Trump asked him about his skills. “I told him what they were, aside from having been governor, as a business person and primarily in agricultural commodities, trading domestically and internationally, and he lit up,” Perdue said. “He knew what it takes to make America great again by doing the things we do well, which is agriculture, for one, and to free up farmers from the regulations that we see. He was spot-on on those issues.”

Tie politics: When asked if Trump liked his tie, Perdue told reporters that the Manhattan real-estate mogul didn’t comment on it. “You like my tie?” the former governor replied. “This is a Porsche tie, actually. Porsche made red tractors in the World War II, so we didn’t talk about my tie, but I should have pointed it out to him.”

NEWSPAPER TRIUMPHS IN SNAP FOIA SUIT: The Argus Leader, a newspaper based in Sioux Falls, S.D., has won its long battle with USDA over its request for data showing food-stamp use at different stores, Courthouse News reports. The paper filed suit against USDA in 2011 after the agency rejected its Freedom of Information Act request, claiming an exemption that protects competitive information.

“SNAP sales are merely a part of the store’s total revenue,” U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier reasoned in her 14-page opinion. “SNAP data does not disclose a store’s profit margins, net income or net worth. SNAP data also does not disclose how a company bids on government contracts or negotiates with the federal government. In essence, SNAP data is merely a bill from the retailer to the government. As the USDA acknowledges, this type of data is regularly disclosed, and disclosure is consistent with FOIA’s underlying purpose.”

HOEVEN: WORK WITH CUBA HINGES ON HUMAN RIGHTS CHANGES: Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) expects the Trump administration to further open trade with Cuba, but at the same time require the island nation to improve its human rights record. “I think that’s something the [Obama] administration hasn’t done enough of,” Hoeven told reporters on the Hill on Tuesday.

Hoeven, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee and Senate Appropriations’ agriculture panel, has advocated for expanding agricultural trade with Cuba as long as its communist government is pressured to change its approach to human rights. He has not endorsed bills that would end the U.S. embargo on Cuba ( S. 491) or lift restrictions on the financing of agricultural exports to the island (S. 1049).

On Monday, just a few days after Fidel Castro’s death, President-elect Trump tweeted: “If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.” The statement threatens one of President Barack Obama’s key international policies, which isn’t actually a “deal” but rather a series of moves intended to restore diplomatic relations.

PETA, CROPLIFE HAPPY TOGETHER: It’s not everyday that both People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and CropLife America are both happy about a new EPA issuance. But that’s the case with a final guidance issued Tuesday by the agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs. It gives pesticide manufacturers the ability to forego the use of skin tests on animals when seeking approval for new formulations, and “has the potential to save 2,500 or more animals from being killed in pesticide tests each year,” PETA says.

The guidance, which remains largely unchanged from a document issued by the agency in March, comes after OPP took a look at its testing procedures and concluded that, “for formulations, if oral data are available, then dermal data provide no added value to regulatory decision-making,” PETA explains. “…By OPP’s own count, the agency receives 200-300 dermal toxicity tests for formulations annually, which use about 10 animals per test,” PETA notes.

CropLife, the trade association that represents pesticide manufacturers, says it worked closely with EPA and others over five years to assess the usefulness of the agency’s testing requirements. “We welcome the move by EPA to focus its resources on those tests that inform the human health risk assessment,” says Janet Collins, CropLife’s executive VP for science and regulatory affairs.

MA’S INSTANT OATS:

— Georgia’s Agriculture Department has suspended an index used to set chicken prices nationwide for the first time in at least 16 years over concerns about its accuracy, The Wall Street Journal reported.

— Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad met with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Wednesday, leading to speculation that he could be under consideration for ambassador to China, given that Trump has praised his knowledge of trade, The Des Moines Register reported.

— A Thanksgiving dinner for more than 800 people at an American Legion hall in Antioch, Calif., ended with at least 17 illnesses and three deaths due to foodborne illness, Food Safety News reports.

— Jim Delligatti, creator of the Big Mac, has died at the age of 98, The Washington Post reports.

— It’s about time the U.S. invested more in fruit and vegetable research, former White House chef and nutrition leader Sam Kass said in Agenda 2020, the new POLITICO health series. Watch it here.

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 @IanKullgren; [email protected] and @mjkorade; and [email protected] and @jsonhuffman. You can also follow @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Ag on Twitter.