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Health Law

Food Safety News

Daily online newspaper dedicated to reporting on issues surrounding food safety.
By Dan Flynn and Suzanna Schreck

Post Frequency: 31.2/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 06:59:07

Key GOP Budget Chairman Slams New Food Safety Law

Posted on January 07, 2011
Political maneuvering over funding the newly enacted food safety law--the most significant update in over seven decades--continued this week as Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), incoming chair of the subcommittee overseeing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's budget, threatened to withhold funding for implementation...

Denver Food Processor Trips Up On Clam Chowder

Posted on January 06, 2011
Tico's Mexican Foods Inc., a Denver food processor known for its green chili, received a Dec. 21 warning letter about its clam chowder from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Tico's, located at 2011 South Bannock St. west of the University of Denver campus, is a 41-year-old business where Denver's Department of Environmental Health has found only one critical violation in the last five years...

Family of Listeria Victim Sues Sangar Produce

Posted on January 06, 2011
The widow of a man who died from a Listeria monocytogenes infection has sued Sangar Fresh Cut Produce in a Texas court.Elizabeth Castellano claims her husband, Hermillo Castellano, died as a result of eating contaminated celery from the San Antonio-based plant...

FDA Questions Dipping Sauce Processing

Posted on January 06, 2011
Wild Thymes Farm Inc., which sells its products by mail and through popular retailers, has run afoul of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) acidified food regulations.FDA says Wild Thymes' acidified Indonesian Peanut Sesame Dipping Sauce has been packed or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health...

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FDA Food Safety Modernization Act: Out of the Box

Posted on January 06, 2011
Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles from CSPI Food Safety Director Caroline Smith DeWaal on the implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. In the first installment, DeWaal explains which provisions of the historic law will be the first to benefit consumers...

Vilsack on List for White House Chief of Staff?

Posted on January 06, 2011
Agriculture Secretary and former Iowa Governer Tom Vilsack is a dark horse candidate for White House Chief of Staff, according to Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman. Acting Chief of Staff Pete Rouse, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle are also on the short list, Fineman reported Wednesday, citing a "very highly placed administration source...

New Nanoparticle Helps Fight Listeria

Posted on January 06, 2011
Scientists at Purdue University have developed a nanoparticle capable of keeping food safe from Listeria contamination for significantly longer than has previously been possible. The nanoparticle works by slowly releasing nisin, an antimicrobial agent that kills Listeria, into food...

With GOP in Majority, Issa Leads Food Oversight

Posted on January 06, 2011
House committee leadership changed hands Wednesday as Republicans took control of the lower chamber in the 112th Congress. One key switch that will likely impact food safety policy: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) took the reins from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as chair of the critical Committee on Oversight and Government Reform...

Dioxin Scare Halts German Egg Sales

Posted on January 05, 2011
High levels of dioxins--chemical toxins that are byproducts of waste incineration--have shown up in eggs and animal feed in Germany in what news reports describe as a spreading scandal. In the past few days, some 1,000 farms in Lower Saxony and dozens of farms in neighboring Rhine-Westphalia have been quarantined after levels of dioxin exceeding mandatory limits were found at poultry and pig farms...

Northwest Company Recalls Clover Sprouts

Posted on January 05, 2011
Washington state health officials provided more details Tuesday on an outbreak of Salmonella Newport that has sickened four people in Washington and three in Oregon.The outbreak has been tied to clover sprouts from Sprouters Northwest of Kent, which has agreed to recall the product and has stopped distributing it...

Seven E. coli O45 Cases Linked to Smoked Meat

Posted on January 05, 2011
Three more E. coli infections have now been confirmed in people who ate smoked ready-to-eat meat products processed in Wisconsin.In late December, the Marathon County Health Department identified four people who became sick after eating E. coli-contaminated smoked meat products made from wild game and purchased at Zillman Meat Market in Wausau...

President Obama Signs Food Safety Bill, At Last

Posted on January 05, 2011
I listened in on Monday's White House conference call announcing that President Obama would sign the Food Safety Modernization Act.Speakers said the new bill will give the FDA the tools and authority it needs to help prevent the CDC's new estimates of the annual burden of foodborne illness: 48 million cases, 180,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths...

Food Safety Law as Civics Lesson

Posted on January 05, 2011
Yes, the Food Safety Bill is now law. But why did it take a decade of gutaches to get it?A few weeks ago, Caroline Smith DeWaal was attending an international conference in Kenya, trying to explain American congressional politics to her European friends...

Wash Hands to Avoid Petting Farm Infections

Posted on January 05, 2011
With the National Western Stock Show opening in Denver on Saturday, and the start-up of county fair season just ahead in Florida, planners of similar events featuring animals and children might look across the pond for some safety pointers.The United Kingdom's Heath Protection Agency (HPA) has recently analyzed 55 outbreaks of gastrointestinal diseases linked to petting farms in England and Wales between 1992 and 2009...

Historic Food Safety Bill Signed into Law

Posted on January 05, 2011
Using 15 pens, President Obama signed the long-awaited FDA Food Safety Modernization Act into law Tuesday evening. The legislation, widely hailed as the most sweeping update to U.S. food safety law since the Great Depression, survived a constitutional slip-up, repeated filibuster threats, fierce debate over controversial amendments, and managed to advance amidst a jam-packed legislative agenda in one of the most productive Congresses in recent history...

Majority of Chinese 'Not Confident' in Food Safety

Posted on January 04, 2011
Almost 70 percent of the Chinese public are not confident about the safety of the country's food supply, a recent national survey found.Insight China and Tsinghua Media Survey Lab teamed up to conduct the survey, the results of which were released over the weekend and did not bode well for a government trying to boost consumer and trading partner confidence amidst a slew of high-profile food safety scandals, from melamine-tainted dairy to chemical-laced hot pot soups...

CA Seafood Processor Needs Fresh HACCP Plan

Posted on January 04, 2011
A Dec. 2nd warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to Fort Bragg, CA-based Ocean Fresh LLC says the seafood processing facility is producing ready-to-eat raw sea urchin that is adulterated.FDA said it inspected the Fort Bragg facility over several days last August and September and found "serious violations" of both the seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point and Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations...

Hepatitis A Warning at Long Island Church

Posted on January 04, 2011
The Nassau County Department of Health is offering to vaccinate individuals who received communion on Christmas Day at either of two services at a Catholic church in Long Island, New York, because they may have been exposed to hepatitis A.At least one member of the clergy involved in communion at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa Park was infected with the virus, according to a news release from the county health department...

Food Safety Bill Advocates Expect Funding Fight

Posted on January 04, 2011
President Obama is expected to sign a sweeping food safety bill into law today, marking the end of a lengthy legislative drama and turning the focus to whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will get the additional funding needed to implement the bill...

Maid-Rites to Hotdogs, It's Inauguration Time!

Posted on January 04, 2011
After Terry Branstad takes the oath of office as governor of Iowa next week, both the governor's residence and Iowa Capitol building will be thrown open to the public who will be sustained as they celebrate by, you guessed it, Maid-Rite sandwiches.Beginning this week and continuing into mid-January, the incoming governors who won elections last November are taking office...

Minnesota Issues Advisory for Apple Cider

Posted on January 03, 2011
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) is advising consumers to avoid drinking Pepin Heights Orchard brand apple cider after the department's routine surveillance sampling revealed the product may be contaminated with a type of mold toxin called patulin...

Why Are There More E. coli Infections in Summer?

Posted on January 03, 2011
The number of E. coli O157:H7 infections increases during the summer months in Great Britain and elsewhere, and a paper published this year in the British journal "Environmental Microbiology" examined the links between that summertime spike, the physiology of infection, and geography...

Dual Jurisdiction: Also in Need of 'Modernization'

Posted on January 03, 2011
"Dual Jurisdiction," for those who may not know, generally describes a processing plant where more than one product line is being produced, and some of the facility's products fall under the Department of Health and Human Service's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency for regulation, and some are regulated by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) agency within the U...

Denver Ups Restaurant Food Safety Fines

Posted on January 03, 2011
Restaurants in Denver will have to pay higher fines for food safety infractions under new regulations recently approved by the City Council that went into effect over the weekend, the Denver Post reports. The Denver Environmental Health Public Inspections Division and the Colorado Restaurant Association worked on the new regulations, which no longer require restaurants to post certain food safety violations in their window...

Publisher's Platform: My New Year's Resolutions

Posted on January 03, 2011
I needed a vacation badly (so did the subscribers and readers of my blog), as I seem to never be at a loss for something to write about - which is a bad thing for all of us.I kept busy in 2010 with Stephanie Smith and Cargill, Linda Rivera and Nestle (that one not over yet) and one too many trips between Seattle and Washington D...

Can Energy Drinks Be a Gateway to Addictions?

Posted on January 03, 2011
People who start drinking the soft drinks known as "energy" beverages early in life may be more prone to anxiety, depression, and addictive behavior later on, some research suggests.Dr. Conrad Woolsey, an assistant professor of applied health and education psychology at Oklahoma State University, has written several scholarly articles and lectured extensively on energy drinks...

Bugs Through the Ages: The Foodborne Illness Fight

Posted on January 03, 2011
A new year is supposed to inspire us all to ponder our future in the context of our past. In the case of foodborne illness, that takes us back some 23 centuries to the spring of 323 BC. In just a few years, Alexander the Great and his army had conquered much of the ancient world when they stopped to rest for a while in Babylon, about 50 miles south of present day Baghdad...

Letter From The Editor: Happy New Year!

Posted on January 02, 2011
"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right" - OprahLast week I told you why the British Boxing Day is the most un-American of holidays. This week I would like to recognize New Year's, eve and day, as my favorites.When reaching this point on the calendar, think of what is behind us...

Some Emerging Food Safety Issues for 2011

Posted on January 01, 2011
Congress and the StatesLast year, waiting and watching for the 111th Congress to hatch a new food safety bill was the dominant food safety news story. Congress will continue to make food safety news in 2011, but mostly through oversight and appropriations activities...

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