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Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary (2012)

Chapter: Appendix A: Workshop Agenda

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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Appendix A

Workshop Agenda

Exploring the True Costs of Food
April 23 and 24, 2012

The Pew Charitable Trusts
901 E Street, NW
Americas Room, Second Floor
Washington, DC 20004

Meeting Goals

  • Discuss the environmental and public health effects and trade-offs of the practices that occur at all life cycle stages (e.g., production, processing, packaging, distribution, preparation, and consumption) for all foods in the U.S. food system.
  • Identify the types of information sources and methodologies required to recognize and estimate the costs and benefits of environmental and public health consequences associated with the U.S. food system.
  • Discuss potential issues and challenges to estimating/quantifying the hidden costs of the U.S. food system.
  • Consider the kind of research strategy and feasibility of conducting a full-scale accounting of the environmental and public health effects for all food products of the U.S. food system.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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DAY 1: April 23, 2012

8:00 a.m. Registration
8:30 Welcoming Remarks
Helen Jensen, Workshop Planning Committee Chair
Iowa State University
8:35 Sponsor Remarks
Anne Haddix, National Center for Chronic Disease
Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
8:50 KEYNOTE
  The Economics of Food Prices and Considerations for Valuing Food
Katherine (Kitty) Smith, American Farmland Trust
9:15 Q&A

Session 1 – Understanding Measures and Strategies for Estimating the Costs of Food

9:30 Life Cycle Assessment
Martin Heller, University of Michigan
10:00 Health Impact Assessment
Jonathan Fielding, Los Angeles County Department of Public
Health (via phone)
10:30 Break
10:45 Environmental Consequences
John Antle, Oregon State University
11:15 Public Health Consequences
James Hammitt, Harvard University
11:45 Discussion
12:15 p.m. Lunch

Session 2 – Identifying External Effects

1:15 Working Group Introductions
Helen Jensen
1:30

Working Groups (two rotations: 1:30-3:00 and 3:00-4:30)

• Energy and greenhouse gas emissions

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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• Soil, water, and other environmental consequences

• Consequences of antimicrobial use in agriculture

• Other public health consequences

4:30 Reflections and Reactions
All Participants
5:00 Adjourn

DAY 2: April 24, 2012

8:00 a.m. Registration
8:30 Welcoming Remarks
Helen Jensen, Planning Committee Chair
8:45 Reports from Working Groups
9:45 Panel on the Social and Ecological Dimensions of the Food Supply
Ecological services: Scott Swinton, Michigan State University
Health inequalities: Steven Wing, University of North Carolina
Accessibility to food: Ricardo Salvador, Union of Concerned Scientists
Animal welfare: Jayson Lusk, Oklahoma State University

Session 3 – Quantification Methods

11:00 Lessons from The Hidden Costs of Energy Report
James Hammitt, Harvard University
11:30 Valuing Agricultural Externalities and Public Health Impacts
Anna Alberini, University of Maryland
12:00 p.m. Concluding Thoughts and Discussion of Next Steps
Helen Jensen
12:15 Adjourn
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
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Page 92
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
×
Page 93
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Workshop Agenda." Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. 2012. Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13521.
×
Page 94
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The U.S. food system provides many benefits, not the least of which is a safe, nutritious and consistent food supply. However, the same system also creates significant environmental, public health, and other costs that generally are not recognized and not accounted for in the retail price of food. These include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, soil erosion, air pollution, and their environmental consequences, the transfer of antibiotic resistance from food animals to human, and other human health outcomes, including foodborne illnesses and chronic disease. Some external costs which are also known as externalities are accounted for in ways that do not involve increasing the price of food. But many are not. They are borne involuntarily by society at large. A better understanding of external costs would help decision makers at all stages of the life cycle to expand the benefits of the U.S. food system even further. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Research Council (NRC) with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened a public workshop on April 23-23, 2012, to explore the external costs of food, methodologies for quantifying those costs, and the limitations of the methodologies.

The workshop was intended to be an information-gathering activity only. Given the complexity of the issues and the broad areas of expertise involved, workshop presentations and discussions represent only a small portion of the current knowledge and are by no means comprehensive. The focus was on the environmental and health impacts of food, using externalities as a basis for discussion and animal products as a case study. The intention was not to quantify costs or benefits, but rather to lay the groundwork for doing so. A major goal of the workshop was to identify information sources and methodologies required to recognize and estimate the costs and benefits of environmental and public health consequences associated with the U.S. food system. It was anticipated that the workshop would provide the basis for a follow-up consensus study of the subject and that a central task of the consensus study will be to develop a framework for a full-scale accounting of the environmental and public health effects for all food products of the U.S. food system.

Exploring Health and Environmental Costs of Food: Workshop Summary provides the basis for a follow-up planning discussion involving members of the IOM Food and Nutrition Board and the NRC Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources and others to develop the scope and areas of expertise needed for a larger-scale, consensus study of the subject.

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