Astonished that they would put domestic food safety at risk during a global E. coli outbreak
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15) expressed outrage at House Republicans for voting down his amendment to H.R. 2112, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012. His amendment
On Friday, June 10, every member of Congress will receive a copy of the newly released book Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak that Changed the Way Americans Eat. The books are supplied courtesy of food safety attorney Bill Marler, who hopes to spur lawmakers to fund The Food Modernization Act
In The Public Interest
Open Letter to President Barack Obama from E. coli 0104:H4
By Ralph Nader
June 3, 2011
Dear President Obama:
My name is E. coli 0104:H4. I am being detained in a German Laboratory in Baveria, charged with being “a highly virulent strain of bacteria.” Together with many others like me, the
I have been litigating foodborne illness cases for nearly two decades. The key to my success has been to find a quick, reliable method of distinguishing between legitimate food poisoning claims and suspect ones. In my experience, the food industry, from farmer to retailer to restaurant, tends to over-emphasize the specious claim and under-value the
Dangerous Strains Make Foodborne Illnesses Harder to Treat, Says CSPI
Ground meat and poultry found to contain antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella should be recalled from the marketplace or withheld from commerce, according to a regulatory petition filed today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The nonprofit food safety watchdog group wants the
By JEFF BENEDICT The Hartford Courant
When I left Connecticut with my family four years ago, we settled into a rural Civil War-era farm in Virginia. I never intended to farm — I was just happy to find an affordable historic home with a few acres around it.
But after settling in, we converted our
Not so long ago, milk was this country’s number 1 food safety concern. Before milk was routinely pasteurized beginning in the 1920s, it regularly caused large outbreaks of deadly diseases. Now in 2011, raw, unpasteurized milk has made its way back into some Americans’ diets and is once again causing
John Partridge, Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition.
Introduction
Since writing the original article found in Michigan Dairy Review in 2005 (1), there have been few changes in the debate over the benefits of consuming raw milk. However, there have been some important developments in the information available and discussion of the topic. In
From the pen of Denis Stearns:
“I am no longer eating steamed buns, a 65-year-old Shanghai man who gave his last name as Chen, declared in front of a supermarket window emblazoned with the motto “No fake goods in Hualian.”
“None of them are reliable,” he spat. “They really have no morals. They will do anything for money.”[1] — New York Times, May 7, 2011
Today Bill Marler forwarded a link to me that led to an article in the People Daily’s Online on the ongoing food quality and safety challenges in the Chinese market for food.[2] Reading the article, one section quickly stood out for me, particularly in its use of an interesting metaphor for unsafe food:
Tainted melamine milk powder, salted duck eggs containing cancer- causing dyes, artificial honey, fake wine, donkey-hide gelatin, waste oil, sulfur steamed ginseng, plaster tofu, dyed bread … the list goes on.
Sadly, many people estimate that the list will get longer. Every day we worry about the next food time bomb exploding, we just do not know where the site of the blast will be.
I had never before imagined adulterated food as a kind of bomb waiting to explode as soon as someone buys the food and eats it, and consumers as casualties of a kind of economic warfare in which profit motives are controlling. But what an apt metaphor it is, especially in describing the vulnerability of the consumer to the financial motives of food sellers who, as the article puts it, “have individual rationalizations, if the illegal gains exceed the costs, it will be worth it.” The article continues, concluding as follows:Continue Reading Of Recycled Buns, Food Safety in China, and the Jabberwocky of Political Debate
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers, restaurant operators, commercial shippers and processors of shellfish not to eat, serve, purchase, sell or ship oysters from Area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay, Fla. because the oysters may be contaminated with toxigenic Vibrio cholerae serogroup O75.
Nine persons have been reported with illness. For eight, the
