With help from Marcia Brown

— The Reagan-Udall Foundation is on track to release its external review of the Food and Drug Administration’s food operations on Tuesday. It’s a hotly anticipated report that will make recommendations to revamp the FDA’s food safety arm after months of fallout over the baby formula shortage.

— A Biden administration rule aimed at expanding the gig worker economy could have effects on the chicken industry. 

— JBS USA is purchasing a chunk of midwestern pork producer TriOak Foods. The company did not disclose the cost of the acquisition.

HAPPY MONDAY, DEC. 5. Welcome to Morning Ag. I’m your host, Garrett Downs. Send tips to [email protected] and @_garrettdowns and follow us at @Morning_Ag.

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ALL EYES ON FDA REVIEW: Tuesday’s report will likely come with significant proposals to change the way the FDA oversees food safety.

Refresh: FDA Commissioner Robert Califf ordered the review in July, following months of harsh criticism over the agency's slow response to the ongoing baby formula shortage caused in part by a product recall.

A POLITICO investigation in April revealed that the FDA's food division has serious — often paralyzing — structural problems, which have led to repeated failures in identifying and stopping food safety issues. The Reagan-Udall Foundation was created by Congress to supplement FDA, and while independent, enjoys close ties with the agency.

MA caught up withJerold Mande, deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service under the Obama administration, who said it’s critically important that the review addresses chronic food safety concerns along with acute ones.

Mande, a senior adviser in the Clinton FDA, said he hopes the report underscores the need for more funding for nutrition and research to find out what in food is making people chronically ill with conditions like obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and to regulate them. He also called for ensuring that leadership at the FDA takes the nutrition element seriously.

“What I'm looking for is a statement that says, you know, we need to do better on acute food safety. There've been a lot of problems there,” Mande said. “But as we redesign the program, one of the things we absolutely have to do is make sure that we're giving at least equal attention to both the acute and chronic food side of it.”

A new food leader? Many stakeholders have called on Reagan-Udall to recommend a new position at FDA: Deputy commissioner for foods with direct oversight over all of FDA’s food operations. The position has existed before, but has been vacant since 2018.

Comments viewed by MA from a group including David Acheson, a former FDA associate commissioner for food, Stephen Ostroff, a former acting FDA commissioner and deputy food commissioner, and Michael Taylor, another former deputy food commissioner, said the position is needed because “FDA commissioners typically come from the medical community, lack food safety expertise, and are stretched too thin to provide the sustained, integrative leadership the Food Program needs.”

The deputy commissioner would be responsible for leading FDA’s three food arms: the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), and the food-related elements of the FDA’s field force, now in the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA).

We’ll break down the report for MA subscribers on Tuesday.

GIG FARMERS: A new proposed rule aimed at the expanding gig worker economy could affect another, unexpected sector: the $60 billion chicken industry, Marcia reports.

Context: The administration’s proposed independent contractor rule is intended to make it more difficult for companies to classify workers as independent contractors, a classification that often comes with lower pay and less benefits. The proposed rule has opened a debate on the employment status of commercial-scale chicken farmers, the vast majority of whom operate under contracts with major poultry processing companies.

Proponents say the proposed rule will make it easier to classify workers as employees. Opponents of the proposed rule say that it diverges from the reality of today’s complex economy and forces employers to scuttle the independence that their contract workers prize.

Why it matters: If the administration finalizes the rule, it could open up potential legal challenges of existing contracts that dominate the poultry industry.

“Nearly every factor that the new rule says should be weighed cuts in favor of finding chicken farmers to be employees,” said Jamie Crooks, founder of the law firm Fairmark Partners, which is representing contract growers in two class action suits alleging they are misclassified. “We’re certainly pleased to see this as a rule, which strengthens plaintiffs’ chance to get reliance across the economy.”

The majority of chicken farmers contract with poultry processing companies to raise the birds. In these exclusive contracts, typically farmers don’t own the animals and the companies control critical aspects of the birds’ lives including breeding, feed and medicine. Farmers, however, shoulder the cost of building barns and other infrastructure.

The proposed rule comes amid a push by the Biden administration to reform how the poultry industry pays its growers. Depending on the Labor Department’s ambitions, some experts said, this rule could provide advocacy groups a legal route to influence farmer contracts.

Some nuance: Some experts acknowledge the rule could be applied to contract farmers, but say it would cause more harm than good.

“The social cost would be enormous and would be for very little gain. All those guys would be fired immediately and would go to a completely different model with company-owned farms,” said Tom Vukina, professor of agriculture and resource economics at North Carolina State University.

CONSOLIDATION WATCH: JBS USA is buying up certain assets of TriOak Foods, a Midwest pork producer.

Context: JBS has been TriOak’s exclusive customer since 2017, the company said in a release announcing the acquisition. But the move is likely to set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill and anticompetitive watchdogs who have warned the meatpacking industry has become too consolidated.

More recently, JBS pulled out of a deal to acquire all remaining shares of Pilgrim’s Pride, a company it already owns 80 percent of. JBS also recently found itself in hot water after the Labor Department filed a complaint alleging child labor violations against a contractor at one of its plants.

The details: TriOak, which is headquartered in Iowa, runs a number of operations across the country including sow operations and feed mills. According to JBS, the deal will bolster its pork supply chain with several farms that are Proposition 12 compliant — a California animal welfare law.

— Karen Comfort has been hired as the deputy assistant secretary for equity, diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for the Department of Health and Human Services. She most recently was chief employee experience officer at the Agriculture Department.

— Vermont’s dairy industry is trying new ideas as climate change takes hold, The Washington Post reports.  

— The new EPA biofuel mandates announced last week put downward pressure on agricultural stocks and commodities, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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