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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

FDA's Bumpy Year Includes More Than 235 Recalls

Posted on December 21, 2010
In a year when it had pepper up its nose and egg on its face, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still did a tidy little business managing the so-called "voluntary" recalls of America's food industry.More than 235 FDA market recalls and withdrawals are in the book for 2010, a year that has not been the agency's finest hour...

Sally Jackson Cheese Confirmed as Outbreak Source

Posted on December 21, 2010
A sample of Sally Jackson raw milk cheese has been confirmed to be a genetic match with an outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 that has sickened 8 people and led to a nationwide recall.Dr. William Keene, senior epidemiologist with the Oregon Public Health Services Acute and Communicable Diseases Program, said Monday that the results of lab tests on the cheese have been culture confirmed, and are indistinguishable by pulse-field gel electrophoreses (PFGE) from the 8 illnesses in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Minnesota...

House Expected to Approve Food Safety Bill Today

Posted on December 21, 2010
The House is expected to approve major food safety legislation today. Though many on Capitol Hill pronounced the bill dead last week, the measure bounced back to life over the weekend when the Senate unanimously--and quite unexpectedly-- advanced the beleaguered bill late Sunday night...

Dozens of Illnesses Linked to Sprouts in Illinois

Posted on December 20, 2010
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is working with the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and local health departments to investigate the Salmonella outbreak that has sickened at least 46 residents of Illinois since Nov...

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Cracker Company Told to Fix Processing Facility

Posted on December 20, 2010
Plain, butter, and garlic crackers from Miami's YeYa Products Corporation were adulterated because of conditions inside its food processing plant, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a Nov. 17 warning letter to the company.During an FDA inspection last July, numerous violations were found including:-- The ceiling over the area where cracker dough is placed to rise had a mold-like substance on it...

Canada to Host International Shellfish Conference

Posted on December 20, 2010
The 8th International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety will be held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island next June.Both the Government of Canada and the Province of Prince Edward Island are supporting the conference, which will be held at the University of Prince Edward Island...

Sprouts Again--This Time an Illinois Outbreak

Posted on December 20, 2010
Sprouts . . . nutritionally dense, next to irresistable on sub sandwiches, and an exceptional medium for the proliferation of dangerous bacteria.Sprouts have been called one of the 10 riskiest foods. They have been estimated to have caused 40 percent of foodborne illness outbreaks linked to fresh produce...

Video Games: An Unhealthy Pastime Shapes Up

Posted on December 20, 2010
The old-fashioned trick of hiding broccoli in the casserole to get kids to eat it has been given a high-tech update. The new tactic? Slipping healthy behavior lessons into children's video games. A study conducted at Baylor College of Medicine found that overweight children who play video games promoting good nutritional choices consumed more fruits and vegetables than their "Call of Duty"-playing counterparts...

Texas Researchers Devise New Irradiation Method

Posted on December 20, 2010
Food-safety engineers from Texas AgriLife Research at Texas A&M University report they've devised a method to reduce the amount of irradiation needed to kill pathogens like Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 that can contaminate fresh produce.That's significant not for safety reasons--irradiation does not cause foods to become radioactive and irradiated food is not harmful--but because cutting the amount of irradiation can keep fresh produce crisp and green while still eliminating illness-causing bacteria...

Letter From The Editor: The Numbers

Posted on December 19, 2010
I've always been a numbers guy. I am not talking about mathematics, but just plain numbers. I do still wake up at night occasionally thinking I have a college algebra or calculus test in the morning. But that's math.At some point I took an aptitude test and learned that I should be a certified public accountant, a profession I've come to respect, but at the time I could think of nothing more boring...

Publisher's Platform: Food Safety on Life Support?

Posted on December 19, 2010
It is Saturday morning and I am watching and listening to the ongoing debate on the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal, which seems like it might pass. The "Dream Act," on the other hand, seems like it will not overcome a Republican filibuster, and then there is the pesky thing called "START" -- Senator Kyle seems to like those atomic weapons...

Sunday Surprise: Senate Passes Food Safety Bill

Posted on December 19, 2010
The food safety bill--S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act--which some had given up for dead, was revived late Sunday attached to a shell bill -- HR 2751, the "Cash for Clunkers" bill-- and passed unanimously just before the Senate adjourned for the day...

Alfalfa Sprouts Salmonella Outbreak in Illinois

Posted on December 18, 2010
Illinois news organizations reported late Friday that health officials are investigating a Salmonella outbreak that may have sickened as many as 50 people in nine counties, most of them since Nov. 1.The Illinois Department of Public Health was cited as saying many of the people who have become ill reported eating alfalfa sprouts at Jimmy John's restaurants...

Texas Firm Recalls Mislabeled Ground Beef

Posted on December 18, 2010
Winn Meats Co of Dallas, TX, is recalling approximately 25,600 pounds of ground beef products that were improperly labeled and potentially adulterated, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Friday.The products' labels include "For Cooking Only," indicating that they are intended for further processing to apply a full lethality at a federally inspected establishment...

E. Coli Prompts Recall of Gourmet Raw Milk Cheese

Posted on December 18, 2010
A longtime, highly respected Pacific Northwest cheesemaker has been linked through an epidemiological investigation to an E. coli outbreak, resulting in a nationwide recall of all its gourmet raw milk cheese and revealing sanitation problems at the dairy...

In Lame Duck Flux, Food Safety Bill All But Dead

Posted on December 18, 2010
Friday the House and Senate approved a measure to keep the government bills paid through Tuesday, as Democrats and Republicans scrambled to come to a deal for a longer-term stop gap measure. As the budget situation becomes more contentious, major food safety legislation, which was attached to spending measures that failed to come to fruition last week, seems all but dead...

USDA Completes Impact Statement on GM Alfalfa

Posted on December 17, 2010
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that it has two preferred options regarding alfalfa genetically modified to resist Monsanto's weed killer Roundup--that it should either be allowed without restrictions, or allowed with certain geographic and isolation restrictions on seeds and, in some places, on hay...

Pork Industry: Antibiotics Estimate Not 'Massive'

Posted on December 17, 2010
The National Pork Producers Coalition is pushing back against claims that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's first ever estimate on antibiotics sold for animal agriculture is evidence of overuse. "Pork producers use antibiotics responsibly, under the direction of a veterinarian, to protect public health and the health of their animals and to produce safe food," said Howard Hill, DVM, who serves on the board of directors for the National Pork Producers Council...

Don't Eat Raw Crayfish

Posted on December 17, 2010
Six residents of Missouri and Illinois came down with a rare parasitic disease -- paragonimiasis - caused by Paragonimus trematodes, or lung flukes, between September 2009 and September 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Warning Issued to Minneapolis Food Warehouse

Posted on December 17, 2010
A warehouse for a Minneapolis food concessioner did not pass inspection last July, and conditions found there resulted in a Dec. 6 warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).FDA sent the warning letter to Weizhen Lin, owner and manager of the New Wha Ming Trading of MN, Inc...

Public Health Cutbacks Harm Food Safety

Posted on December 17, 2010
Food safety in the United States is being jeopardized by surveillance and workforce cutbacks and other gaps in the public health system, a new study from the nonpartisan Trust for America's Health (TFAH) concludes.The wide-ranging "Ready or Not?" report--an annual assessment for the past eight years-- evaluates the public health system's ability to handle contagious diseases, disasters, and bioterrorism...

Why now? Was CDC's Timing on Estimates Political?

Posted on December 17, 2010
Wednesday's release of the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates on foodborne illness in the U.S., which are significantly lower than the oft-cited decade-old estimates, left many in the food policy community wondering about the timing of the report...

Food Safety Bill In Doubt After Budget Concession

Posted on December 17, 2010
Pending food safety legislation hit a serious snag late Thursday as Senate Democrats abandoned their effort to fight for an all-encompassing provision to fund the government through September. The fate of the food safety legislation, which was attached to both the House and Senate versions of wide-ranging spending bills, would be the first significant reform of food safety laws in several decades...

Who Controls Children: McDonald's or Parents?

Posted on December 16, 2010
McDonald's is standing its ground after being sued Wednesday in California for marketing its Happy Meals to children.The plaintiff in the class action lawsuit is Monet Parham, mother of two from Sacramento. She is represented by the Washington, D...

Dannon Pays $21 Million for Exaggerated Claims

Posted on December 16, 2010
It sure would be nice if one serving of yogurt a day kept you regular or that a dairy drink could boost your immunity, but apparently neither claim is true.At least that's what the Federal Trade Commission and a multi-state coalition of 39 attorney generals, led by Oregon and Tennessee, said in a deceptive-advertising settlement announced Wednesday...

Winnipeg Issues Cantaloupe Warning

Posted on December 16, 2010
A public warning has been out in Winnipeg since Monday (Dec. 13) about cantaloupes sold at a Safeway Store.The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said the cantaloupes sold at a Winnipeg Safeway at 655 Osborne St. might be contaminated with Salmonella...

CDC: How Safe Is Our Food?

Posted on December 16, 2010
In this editorial, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal (January 2011), the journal's associate editor Dr. J. Glenn Morris discusses the new estimates of foodborne illness incidence in the United States and what they mean for food safety: By J...

DeLauro Renews Push for Single Food Safety Agency

Posted on December 16, 2010
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) Wednesday reintroduced the Single Food Safety Agency Act of 2010, a bill that would create a single federal agency to oversee the nation's food supply, an effort to consolidate responsibilities that now belong to a dozen different federal agencies...

Who Inspects What? A Food Safety Scramble

Posted on December 16, 2010
Two government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, share most of the responsibility of food safety inspection. The rules that determine which agency is responsible for which food can be complex, and sometimes the division of labor defies categorization altogether...

New Estimates Lower Incidence of Food Poisoning

Posted on December 16, 2010
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a new, lower estimate of the overall public health burden of foodborne illness in the United States. CDC now says food poisoning sickens 1 in 6 Americans each year, not 1 in 4 as the agency had estimated in 1999...

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