A recent LA Times OpEd by Al Meyerhoff and Carl Pope said the House of Representatives this month passed the National Uniformity for Foods Act, a measure that would kill or cancel significant parts of 200 food-safety laws in 50 states. This ill-advised bill, supported by millions of food-industry dollars, passed without a single hearing. Now it’s in the hands of the Senate. If it passes there, among its many victims would be California’s requirement that foods containing harmful chemicals display a warning for consumers.
Those warnings are mandated by Proposition 65, enacted, as one court described it, to be “a legislative battering ram” by an overwhelming majority of voters in 1986. In passing the measure, Californians wanted to encourage manufacturers to remove dangerous substances from their products before they reached supermarket shelves.
Proposition 65’s requirement that companies either warn consumers or remove harmful chemicals works, and it remains a vital protection.Continue Reading Warning: This bill could make you sick
Stomping on state standards
The Chicago Tribune reports that by the time the U.S. Food and Drug Administration got around to worrying about how much lead we might be ingesting along with our calcium supplements, most of the manufacturers of those tablets had grudgingly gotten the lead out.
Why? Because California already had its own standard for allowable levels of lead, and the companies wanted to sell calcium in California. Told to either reduce the lead or label the product as potentially dangerous, the companies chose to make their product safer, not just for Californians but for everyone. The FDA had nothing to do with it.Continue Reading Stomping on state standards
Today’s question: How do you properly cook an alligator?
Jane Zhang of the Wall Street Journal reports that a public-health officer in Sydney, Australia, had an urgent question: A consumer found a black, shiny, 1.3-centimeter-long beetle with fine, short antennas and hairy legs in a sandwich. The plastic bag the bread came in “had no holes in it, and I could see the imprint of the beetle within the slice of bread. Would it be possible for the beetle to live through the baking process?”
The official in question knew just where to get the answer: an email network called Foodsafe that posts the correspondence of an elite lineup of microbiologists, chefs, restaurateurs, industry consultants and regulators from about 30 countries, including the U.S., Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and even Iraq. With its debates, battles and mini-celebrities, Foodsafe (www.foodsafetyweb.info) puts on display world experts as they grapple with the increasingly complex and strange world of food and disease.Continue Reading Today’s question: How do you properly cook an alligator?
Let health ‘umps’ call potlucks
In a Wisconsin State Journal OpEd last week, Brae Surgeoner and Ben Chapman said Wisconsin Assembly recently passed the aptly named Potluck Liberation Act, a law exempting community dinners from health inspection.
Patriotically, Rep. Barb Gronemus, D-Whitehall, stated, “To say you shouldn’t have a potluck is like saying you shouldn’t have a ballgame.”
Comparing dinners where the possibility of foodborne illness is a frightening reality to one of America’s much-loved pastimes is intriguing. Acquiring a salmonella infection from an improperly handled turkey would be kind of like standing in front of a Pedro Martinez fastball: The messy reaction in your pants would be similar.Continue Reading Let health ‘umps’ call potlucks
A hard bill to swallow
In an OpEd yesterday, Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post discussed that last week, even as Congress with great fanfare was protecting the American people against whatever mischief the harbor barons of Dubai were contemplating, it quietly decided to strip some long-standing protections from the same American people at the behest of our very own food industry. Last Wednesday the House passed the National Uniformity for Food Act, which might better be named the Swallow at Your Own Risk Act.
In one swoop, the bill preempts roughly 200 state laws governing food safety. The theory here is that we lack uniform national standards in such areas as lead and arsenic content, milk and shellfish safety, and the stuff that goes into food coloring and additives. National standards, the bill’s champions argue, would be good for the whole country.Continue Reading A hard bill to swallow
New consumer group’s web site debuts as resource on food and water issues
Per a Food & Water Watch press release, amidst the furor of takeovers of U.S. resources by multinational corporations and media reports about the meat industry’s controversial practice of using carbon monoxide to extend shelf life on meat products, a new consumer group has emerged to tackle the growing corporate control and abuse of essential resources. Food & Water Watch today launched its new Web site. It is available at www.foodandwaterwatch.org.
“Nearly everyday, we hear about yet another food safety scare or another community that is protesting jacked-up water rates forced on them by private providers. People across the United States and the world are starting to realize the impact that corporations have had on our public resources — and they aren’t happy about it,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “We hope our new Web site will help people learn more about what they eat and drink, and motivate them to take action, get involved, and demand change.”Continue Reading New consumer group’s web site debuts as resource on food and water issues
Food-safety labeling bill advances
The Seattle Times reports that the House approved legislation Wednesday that would standardize food-safety labeling requirements across the country, a move critics said would replace some strong state standards with weaker federal ones.
The vote was endorsed 283-139 and goes to the Senate. Food producers and grocers backed the bill.
The measure would concentrate most food-safety labeling power with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and prohibit states from requiring warnings that differ from those mandated by the federal government.Continue Reading Food-safety labeling bill advances
Food warnings
Libby Quaid of the The Associated Press reports that hundreds of warnings on food labels could vanish under a measure moving toward approval in the House.
The bill would stop states from adding warnings that are different from federal rules. States currently add hundreds of extra warnings, indicating the presence of arsenic in water, mercury in fish, alcohol in candy, pesticides in vegetables and more.
“This would be the most sweeping change in decades to our nation’s efforts to protect the food supply,” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Thursday during House debate on the bill.
The food industry wants consistent warnings across state lines to reduce the cost of making many different labels. The industry has attracted broad support in the House, where a majority is co-sponsoring the bill.Continue Reading Food warnings
Bill may undo States’ rules on safe food
Marian Burros of the New York Times reports that the U.S. House is, according to the AP, expected to vote Thursday on a bill that would pre-empt all state food safety regulations that are more stringent than federal standards.
According to the National Uniformity for Food Coalition, whose members include trade associations, supermarket chains and food manufacturers, different laws in different states confuse consumers, stating on its web site that, “The citizens of all states deserve the same level of food safety. Food cannot be safe in one state and unsafe in another.”Continue Reading Bill may undo States’ rules on safe food
Foodborne illness presents major problem
Mary-Jo Lomax of La Voz reports that an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne illnesses occur each year in the United States. While the majority of these cases are mild and cause symptoms for only a day or two, some cases are more serious. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that there are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to foodborne diseases annually.
The most serious cases usually occur in the very young, the very old or those with weakened immune systems.
Foodborne illnesses are caused by a variety of bacteria, viruses, parasites, and even toxins. Symptoms can appear from a few hours to a week or more.Continue Reading Foodborne illness presents major problem