By Tony Eberhard, IDFA Vice President of Legislative Affairs
Welcome to “Hill of Beans,” a periodic update by Tony Eberhard about the association’s work in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate to advance dairy industry priorities. After working on the Hill for various members of Congress and senators since 2001, Eberhard gives IDFA readers a former Hill staffer’s take on what is going on and how it affects our priorities.
“There is a lot of work being done in the House and Senate that never makes the headlines but affects members’ bottom lines, and I’m hoping these updates will prove useful to you and your organization,” Eberhard said. “I’m titling these updates ‘Hill of Beans’ because to many in national media this information might not amount to much, but to our industry’s agenda in Congress, it is critical.” Read the update below.
Lost in the White House Rose Garden press conference last Friday where President Trump spoke to the passage of the fiscal year (FY)2019 spending package was the significance of thousands of needed funding adjustments to federal agencies that were included in the bill. Many of these changes, like the boost to FDA standards of identity funding and ice cream research that IDFA supported, seem small in comparison to the over $1 trillion federal discretionary budget. Yet, for many American job creators, like the dairy industry, these changes will have a big impact.
Take the funding to support FDA’s Initiative to Modernize the Standards of Identity. IDFA asked our Hill champions for additional resources so that these standards can be modernized. The dairy industry must comply with numerous nutrition and labeling regulations, including standards of identity. If processors violate these regulations, they can be liable for misbranding, so ensuring that these standards keep pace with new technology and product innovations is critical. We as an industry depend on the FDA to update these standards of identity, to allow for industry innovations and changes dictated by the marketplace, but unfortunately, changes to standards of identity historically have taken decades to enact. For instance, we’ve been awaiting action since the year 2000 on a petition allowing the use of ultrafiltered milk for cheese and since 2009 for an updated yogurt standard of identity.
Thankfully, the final FY2019 Agriculture Appropriations bill includes a $2 million increase for the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling which will provide additional resources to support the modernization of the standards of identity and product labeling, a double-digit funding increase for these activities at FDA. Properly utilized, these resources will reduce regulatory delays and unshackle innovation in our industry.
IDFA’s work to encourage ice cream co-product solutions is another example of new funding that will potentially have a big impact. Every year, ice cream processors who employ more than 23,000 Americans and contribute more than $9 billion to the nation’s economy, face the same problem: millions of pounds of nutrient rich ice cream co-product must be disposed of as waste. In addition to wasting valuable natural resources, this discarded co-product costs the ice cream industry millions of dollars annually in lost product value and disposal fees. Despite the efforts of many ice cream processors to develop solutions to this problem, no viable answers have been found, and it’s estimated that almost 5% of the raw materials that go into making ice cream products end as waste product.
Fortunately, USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) possesses the expertise needed to identify innovative solutions and develop sustainable uses for ice cream co-product just as ARS has for other types of food products. The final FY2019 Agriculture Appropriations bill includes $1.5 million for ARS to conduct research into beneficial uses for this ice cream co-product that currently go to waste. IDFA also believes that this important research may have applicability to reduce co-product waste for other types of dairy products.
Funding for both the FDA modernization of standards of identity and ice cream research are great examples of how the federal government can help the dairy industry innovate, compete, and grow jobs. Dairy is full of dynamic professionals moving the industry forward, and this modest federal investment is designed to help unlock that potential.
It’s easy to lose perspective when it comes to numbers. Sure, $2 million for FDA standards of identity work isn’t much compared to FDA’s larger, multi-billion budget and $1.5 million for ice cream research is a fraction of total federal research dollars, but these are examples of how a modest investment can be leveraged to pay high dividends in the future. FDA now has the resources to update regulations that are very important to our dairy industry. With over $200 billion in economic output, the U.S. dairy industry, if allowed to innovate and make itself more competitive, can help drive economic growth. In ice cream, this ARS research could unlock new uses and products from the currently discarded waste product, and at the same time support ice cream makers’ efforts to improve sustainability.
A lot of work went into making this new funding a reality. It’s difficult to get any increase in spending for priorities in the Agriculture Appropriations bill given that the budget for this bill has been tight for many years. Thankfully, IDFA benefited from strong Hill champions and tremendous IDFA member engagement through emails and phone calls to key Members of Congress, capped off by a successful IDFA strategic fly-in last June.
Building on our success in FY2019, IDFA has already begun work on our FY2020 appropriations agenda. This month, members of the new IDFA Executive Council came to Washington D.C. for an appropriations and trade strategic fly-in. They excelled at “making new friends and keeping the old.” We continue to grow dairy champions as we move our appropriations agenda forward.
IDFA may not have been part of the Rose Garden press conference, but thanks to extraordinary member engagement, the recently enacted FY2019 appropriations bill gave our industry much to celebrate and left IDFA’s appropriations agenda smelling like roses.