While I believe this is more of a elite problem (oh noes! that $80 jar of caviar was really fish eggs from Mississippi!) than a general public health problem, there is the issue of allergies, which could come into play, as well as general mistrust of the system.
There is new hope that the FDA is finally ready to get serious about BPA.
The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.
BPA is a chemical that is technically not in food, instead it can be found in hard plastic bottles (look for recycling number 7) and the lining of aluminum cans. However, the chemical doesn’t always stay there, and has been found to leach into the food it holds, often at toxic levels.
The first major concern was the high levels of BPA found in baby bottles and sippy cups. While manufacturers have been moving to remove BPA from those items, people are starting to ask about BPA affects on the rest of us.
Naglene and Camelbak have stopped using BPA in their products, however if you have an older item, you may want to look into an upgrade. Sadly, most canned goods manufacturers have resisted a BPA-free diet. Requiring product labeling, coupled with a good education program, amy be an easier and almost effective strategy than attempting an outright ban.
While most of the barely year old administration has been mired in a morass of inertia, there has been a few bright points of, egads, CHANGE. And I’m happy to report its the good sort of change. While Hilda Solis has been hard at work trying to keep employers from killing their employees and screwing them over in their paychecks, the FDA has been ginning up the oversight machine as well.
Working with the DOJ, the FDA has asked for a permanent injunction against the Quesos Mi Pueblito manufacturer, because along with a bunch of mexican cheese-esque products, they have also been manufacturing Listeria.
WalletPop has all the delightful details:
In the complaint, provided to WalletPop, inspectors found a pit in the cheese production room with sewer gases leaking from it, thermometers that register the wrong temperatures — causing cheese to be “refrigerated” at up to 55 degrees, the use of rusty equipment and an infestation of cockroaches and other insects. Tests also found Listeria in several parts of the facility.
The FDA said the company reported addressing many of the issues in the fall, but retests over several months continued to find contamination at the plant. On other occasions, responding to state officials, the plant was closed for cleaning and repairs only to be cited again for more violations.
Requests to close down facilities are uncommon.
Compare this response to the horrendous peanut butter contamination a year and a half ago that killed 8 people. Yep, change is good. People not dying is even better.
The Center or Science in the Public Interest put out a list this week of the Top 10 riskiest foods based on the number of outbreaks and the number of people who got sick. And those lucky duckies are:
PEW put out a new report yesterday on American attitudes regarding food and food safety. The verdict is pretty clear:
Also out yesterday, the FDA rolled out their Reportable Food Registry, the new database that is supposed to track food bourne illnesses:
Facilities that manufacture, process or hold food for consumption in the United States now must tell the FDA within 24 hours if they find a reasonable probability that an article of food will cause severe health problems or death to a person or an animal.
The reporting requirement applies to all foods and animal feed regulated by the FDA, except infant formula and dietary supplements, which are covered by other regulatory requirements. Some examples of reasons a food may be reportable include bacterial contamination, allergen mislabeling or elevated levels of certain chemical components.
Not a moment too soon, now the question is whether this new reporting scheme is going to change the practices of food processors.
From Congressional Quarterly, the House is scheduled to vote today on this (no link, subscription required):
Food Safety — HR 2749, Food Safety Enhancement Act, is scheduled for House consideration today under suspension of the rules. The bill overhauls food safety regulations for farms and food processing facilities, requiring more frequent inspections at food facilities and giving the FDA authority to impose criminal and civil penalties. The measure generally exempts farms from registration requirements and fees, although the bill does establish new regulations for the farming practices for fresh produce. The FDA would have authority to impose mandatory quarantines on geographic areas which are concluded to be the source of contaminated food posing a serious threat to humans or animals. The House will take up a version of the bill that has been modified as a result of talks between leaders of the Energy and Commerce and Agriculture committees to address concerns of agricultural interests about the role of the FDA in regulating farm activities. The compromise bill was released this morning.
I’ve been trying to track down confirmation of this, but it is being reported that the Obama Administration, the USDA and the FDA will jointly announce a new set of food safety standards today at 1:30pm EDT. Supposedly, they will present the following:
Under the new rules:
—The FDA will help the food industry establish better tracing systems to track the origins of a bacterial outbreak.
—A new network will be established to help the many agencies that regulate food safety to communicate better.
—Egg and poultry producers will have to follow new standards designed to reduce salmonella contamination.
—The Food Safety Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency that inspects meat, will increase sampling of ground beef ingredients in an effort to better find E. coli contamination.
—The FDA will recommend ways that producers of leafy greens, melons and tomatoes can reduce disease strains, and require stricter standards in those industries within two years.
—The FDA and the Agriculture Department also will create new positions to better oversee food safety.
As always, the devil is in the details.
There’s been another big step forward for the Food Safety Enhancement Act. A key House panel, the Energy and Commerce Committee, approved the legislation, and will move forward to the House floor for a vote.
The bill passed yesterday by the Energy and Commerce Committee would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to force recalls of tainted foods, require food facilities to be inspected as often as once a year, and give the FDA expanded authority to impose civil penalties on scofflaw companies.
The legislation, approved on a voice vote, would also require companies to keep better records of their activities to make it easier for federal authorities to trace the origins of outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Food importers would have to register with the government.
The power of mandatory recall is the key piece here - the FDA has no power to do anything but beg Big Food not to kill anymore people well after an outbreak hits consumers. So this is great, great news. But like anything else, there is always a caveat:
The House bill does not apply to meat, poultry, eggs, or other products regulated by the Department of Agriculture.
Guess this legislation is just another reason to go veggie.
Jill has the Consumer Union’s response to the bill.
It appears that the FDA is waking from a long slumber. Already this week, the FDA issued a warning on the use of Zicam, which apparently can cause some people to permanently lose their sense of smell. Layer on top of that the warning the FDA put out on the popular weight loss supplement Hydroxycut:
This month, the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to stop using Hydroxycut, a line of herbal dietary supplements marketed as an aid to weight loss, body sculpting and athletic performance.
The warning prompted Hydroxycut’s maker, Iovate Health Sciences Inc. of Ontario, Canada, to recall 14 of its products. The FDA has linked these products to 23 known cases of liver damage (including one death), four reports of seizures and 46 reports of cardiovascular events — from palpitations to heart attack — since 2002.
For too long, dietary supplements have been an easy way for companies to sneak untested products on to pharmacy shelves. They were able to do so because the FDA was heavily defanged during the Bush year. Maybe these events are an indication that the FDA is putting some muscle back on.
Of course we shouldn’t get too excited - Zicam is claiming that there is nothing wrong with their product and is refusing to do a voluntary recall. And, pathetically, there’s not a whole lot that the FDA can do about that.
The agency issued its consumer alert even though Matrixx refused to recall its products, a highly unusual event. In a news release, Matrixx said it had suspended shipments of Zicam and would reimburse customers who wanted a refund.
“Matrixx Initiatives stands behind the science of its products and its belief that there is no causal link between its intranasal gel products and anosmia,” the release said. “For this reason, Matrixx Initiatives believes that the F.D.A. action is unwarranted and will seek a meeting with the F.D.A. to review the company’s product safety data.”
Matrixx had $101 million in sales last year, of which $40 million came from Zicam products. Because Matrixx has called Zicam a homeopathic product, the company was not required to seek agency approval before selling it.
The F.D.A. does not have the power to order product recalls but must rely on manufacturers to do so voluntarily. Bills now moving through Congress would give the agency that power. Bush administration appointees said the F.D.A. did not need mandatory recall authority because companies always withdrew unsafe products when asked.
Those Bush administration appointees were funny guys. Always joking around. Now its time for the grownups.
I generally consider myself to be a champion of the little guys - the community gardens, farmers markets, local food coops and particularly the small independent farmers. So I find it very surprising that I find meself agreeing with the statements made by the Grocery Manufacturers Association in the Wall Street Journal today:
“We are not opposed to all fees,” said Scott Faber, vice president of federal affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing the $2.1 trillion food, beverage and packaged-products industry. “We are concerned that a poorly designed fee to finance inspections and enforcement would create an inherent conflict of interest. That would erode rather than enhance consumer confidence.”
This is a serious conflict of interest, no different than a lot of the issues we saw in the financial sector due to investment firms paying ratings companies for their ratings. Any entity will be beholdant to their revenue stream in some manner, so its best to try and create as much distance between the ratings/inspectors and those they rate/inspect. I would much prefer to see a junk food sales tax than for the farmers and processors to pay the FDA. The GMA had this suggestion:
Mr. Faber of GMA said the food industry supports fees to cover costs of repeat inspections as well as certification fees for U.S. exporters as well as fees for product recalls, an idea included in Senate legislation sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.).
Last week I went to a hearing to review food safety standards for horticulture and organic agriculture by the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture. I haven’t written it up, because there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘there’ there. The first panel had David Acheson, Commissioner for Foods for the USDA, and David Shipman, Agricultural Marketing Service of the Dept of Agriculture. It was a little disturbing how few of the members showed up. Of the 10 members, only Reps. Cardoza, Massa, Schmidt, Costa, Schrader, Kratovil and Lumas attended parts of the first panel and less than half stayed for the whole thing. Reps. Moran, Johnson, and Murphy were MIA. Maybe they showed for the second panel, which I couldn’t stay for.
Anywho, the majority of Acheson’s testimony was various members asking if he was looking into X issue or Y solution, in which he had pretty much the same answer for everything, “yes we are looking into it” or “we already have a program for that”. A very positive revelation was how concerned all the members on both sides of the aisle were concerned about the adverse affect new laws and new regulation would have on small farmers. Both Massa(D-29) and Schmidt(R-OH), who couldn’t come from more opposite sides of the spectrum belabored this point.
The other aspect of the hearing I found interesting was Shipman repeated references to agricultural marketing agreements. He often made it sound like these agreements were what we currently have instead of real regulation. The California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement was discussed as an example of voluntary standards. The is essentially what would have happened with organics had the USDA not codified the label. The CLGM defines a set of standards and then producers apply to be certified. I can only assume that the value in this is then the producers can use the label for marketing purposes with distributors and buyers. Unfortunately, should members fail to uphold those standards, there isn’t anything that anyone can do about it:
Decertification Actions
The following handlers are signatories to the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement who are currently decertified or who will not be certified:
There are currently no decertification actions
Shipman often pushed back on the committe, asking if they made these regulations mandatory was the US Congress ready to pay for them.
just may be the new foodie buzz word. Former FDA chief Dr. David Kessler has a new book out, The End of Overeating, where he likens food consumption to everything from cigarettes to herion. Who knows, he may be right, but I guess we’ll have to read the book to find out.
Food companies paying inspectors to inspect them seems awefully similar to securities companies paying rating agencies to rate them. And we all know where that got us.
Jennifer Huget from WaPo illustrates why our food safety system is so out of control, and why a key part of the fix is consolidating all the different food safety functions of our government into one entity.
As the situations have unfolded, one thing has grown increasingly clear: Somebody has to be in charge of keeping our food safe. As it stands, that responsibility is parceled out among more than a dozen government agencies, most prominent among them the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, whose jurisdictions are defined in mysterious ways. (For instance, if a frozen pizza has just a cheese topping, it’s regulated by the FDA, but if it has meat, it’s the USDA’s to monitor.) Once people are sickened by food-borne pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli, the CDC joins in, investigating and tracking outbreaks and providing information about preventing and treating illness caused by those pathogens.
What would real change in the FDA look like? EyeOnFDA gives us a glimpse:
During the recording of a podcast that I did with Dr. David Acheson, Assistant Commissioner for Food Safety at FDA back in September 2008, he outlined the anatomy of a food recall, that included reactions to CDC reports of illness outbreaks. It would seem apparent that this methodology may be a thing of the past as the Administration begins to position on more sure footing in response to consumer protections. In other words, the evidence of conditions that could make people ill are going to become the basis for action, rather than evidence of illness itself. That may not sound like much of a change, but it is. It means that food manufacturers are going to be held to a higher standard than before to ensure and provide proof that their manufacturing methods are air tight and that products do not have the potential to cause harm. It also means that large-scale recalls may be undertaken with more frequency in the future.
Our friend, Gardiner Harris over at the NYT, has a piece today on the tougher stance that the FDA is looking to take, including *gasp* telling people not to eat those contaminated pistachios.
Christopher Doering from Reuters sheds a little light onto why food oversight is so out of whack in our country.
“It seems to me today we have competing philosophies” with the USDA focused more on prevention while the Food and Drug Administration targets mitigation due to a heavy workload and limited staffing, said Vilsack.
Fifteen federal agencies handle food safety including FDA, which handles about 80 percent of the food supply, and USDA, which is in charge of red meat, poultry and eggs.
“When you have 15 separate agencies in the federal government responsible for some part (of food safety), you’ve got way too many,” said Vilsack, who supports a single food agency. Who do “you hold accountable when there is a problem?”
15? Are there even 15 cabinet members? I don’t even think they have 15 people confirmed to work at Treasury yet. What the heck? Crazy.
Update: Here are the 8 departments with fingers in the pie. The USDA is comprised of 8 different agencies.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Eight agencies within the department are separately responsible for such matters as the safety of domestic and imported meat, poultry and processed egg products; conducting food safety research; establishing quality standards; providing economic analysis; providing statistical data, including agricultural chemical usage data; and protecting the health and value of agricultural resources.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - Responsible for safety of all domestic and imported food products except meat, poultry and processed egg products.
Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau - Enforces laws covering the production, use and distribution of alcoholic beverages.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - Protecting public health, including food-borne illness surveillance.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Regulates the use of pesticides and maximum allowable residue levels in food commodities and animal feed.
Federal Trade Commission - Prohibits false advertisements for food.
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) - Conducts voluntary, fee-for-service inspections of seafood safety and quality.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - Responsible for coordinating agencies