Count the editorial board of the San Jose Mercury News as another vote in support of reform for the FDA. This editorial outlines the fight against the bill being put up by the food industry and their Republican supporters.
As I discussed here last week, food industry lobbyists and Republicans are now balking at several desperately
WESH.com reported that a Delta Airlines flight headed to Atlanta from Ecuador made an emergency stop in Orlando today after three passengers’ food poisoning symptoms became severe and they required medical attention. According to WESH, two of the three passengers were transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center for treatment for food poisoning, while the third
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is out with a discussion draft of “the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.”
Given who’s signed on to this one, it’s probably the one to watch. Sponsors include Chair Emeritus John D. Dingell, Chairs Henry A. Waxman, Frank Pallone, and Bart Stupak, and Reps. Diana DeGette and Betty Sutton.
The new draft is based on the food reforms contained in H.R. 759, the Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009, introduced in January by Reps. Dingell, Stupak and Pallone. Favored bills get heard quickly, and this one gets its first hearing next week, on Wednesday, June 3rd.
"As evidenced by the recent widespread contaminations in our food supply, including E.coli in spinach, salmonella in peppers and the most recent outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, it is clear that we must act now," said Rep. Pallone, Chair of the Health Subcommittee. "This draft builds on legislation introduced earlier this year and will empower the FDA with the resources and authorities it needs to ensure that our food is safe to eat. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and the administration to move this crucial piece of legislation forward
"Our 10 food safety hearings in the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations have highlighted the need for an overhaul of our food safety laws," said Rep. Stupak, Chair of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. "The American people deserve a Food and Drug Administration that has both the funding and the regulatory authority needed to protect our food supply and hold the food industry accountable. President Obama and the new FDA leadership have expressed a commitment to food safety reform and I look forward to working with them to return FDA to the gold standard in protecting the public health."
A detailed summary of the draft follows below.
Continue Reading Bill Aims To Return FDA To “The Gold Standard” In Protecting Public Health
In a "Perspective" piece published online by the New England Journal of Medicine Tuesday, May 26, the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., and Principal Deputy Commissioner of FDA, Joshua M. Sharfstein, M.D., wrote about their vision for the future of how the FDA will operate
.jpg)
I have never become accustomed to the profound nature of many of the injuries and illnesses we see at Marler Clark. I often find myself saying to the mother, husband, or grandson of somebody who has suffered life-altering injuries that "I wish we never had to meet" . . . my only method of verbalizing the
During the Bush administration, and its do-anything-help-big-business approach, agencies were required to insert "preemption" language into all regulations, rules, and policies that the agencies promulgated. This was intended as an attempt to "protect" corporations from state laws and regulations that had the effect of imposing stricter requirements, especially with regard to product safety. One big "win" for this approach was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reigel v. Medtronic, which held that people injured by a medical device "pre-approved" by the FDA could not file a lawsuit claiming that the device was defective as a matter of state law. A not so successful attempt to use preemption for food cases was that tried by the Excel Corporation in litigation arising from an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to a Milwaukee-area Sizzler restaurant. In those cases, Excel argued that its admittedly contamianted meat was neither defective nor unsafe because USDA policy at the time only prohibited this deadly pathogen from being in ground beef. (For an op-ed piece I wrote about this USDA policy, see Who does the USDA Really Protect, which can be found here: www.marlerblog.com/2008/08/articles/lawyer-oped/who-does-the-usda-really-protect-when-it-comes-to-deadly-e-coli/)
But now most of the arguments in favor of preempting state law in favor of "uniform" federal regulations are going to be undercut by a just-issued Executive Order that declares a new (or renewed) era of states rights. The introductory paragraph of the Order is telling and compelling:
From our Nation’s founding, the American constitutional order has been a Federal system, ensuring a strong role for both the national Government and the States. The Federal Government’s role in promoting the general welfare and guarding individual liberties is critical, but State law and national law often operate concurrently to provide independent safeguards for the public. Throughout our history, State and local governments have frequently protected health, safety, and the environment more aggressively than has the national Government.
Not only does this Order announce a new direction, it requires the heads of all federal agencies to "review regulations issued within the past 10 years that contain statements in regulatory preambles or codified provisions intended by the department or agency to preempt State law," and to remove them. So once more the role of the state in protecting its citizens from unsafe food and other products is restored to its rightful place. More importantly, the next time that a big food company argues that the USDA said it was okay to poison people, it will likely get laughed out of court. Or at least we can hope so.
To read the full text of the Executive Order, please click on the Continue Reading link.Continue Reading New Obama Policy Allows States to Be Tougher on Food Safety
In a bit of news that is less surprising than it should be, the AP today reports that the FDA has for the last several years failed to perform a large percentage of required audits for inspections being conducted (under contract) by the States. According to today’s report (based on documents recently released to Congress:
.jpg)
Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting, as well as disturbing, article on the continuing dangers of ConAgra frozen pot pies. Specifically, despite the 2007 outbreak and all the serious illnesses it caused, the safety of the pot pies still depend on the customer cooking them correctly. Apparently, the challenge of making the pot pies safe to eat, even if cooked to a temperature below what would constitute a "kill step," was simply too difficult. Here is how the NY Times described the decision:
The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.
The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.
So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”
For the full article, see www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/business/15ingredients.html
But getting a frozen-hard pot-pie to reach a uniform temperature of 165 degrees is by no means an easy thing to accomplish, as the Times article amply demonstrates.
But attempts by The New York Times to follow the directions on several brands of frozen meals, including ConAgra’s Banquet pot pies, failed to achieve the required 165-degree temperature. Some spots in the pies heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt.
A ConAgra consumer hotline operator said the claims by microwave-oven manufacturers about their wattage power could not be trusted, and that any pies not heated enough should not be eaten. “We definitely want it to reach that 165-degree temperature,” she said. “It’s a safety issue.”
A safety issue indeed. Because if that pot pie is contaminated with a deadly pathogen, and the cooking process does not essentially pasteurize the pot pie, then eating will could be the real "kill-step" here.
For additional discussion, please click Continue Reading.Continue Reading Giving New Meaning to the Term “Kill Step”
State legislators around the US, fed up with the perceived slow response of the federal government to enact stronger food safety laws, have begun sending a clear message to Washington: if you won’t protect our citizens from increasing foodborne illness outbreaks, then we will.
in a Wall Street Journal article by Jane Zhang, she highlights
As reported by the Wall Street Journal’s Jane Zhang, states frustrated by the slow pace of national food safety reform have begun to take matters into their own hands. Georgia was hit hard by the recent outbreak of Salmonella in peanut butter and peanut products; as the leading producer of peanuts in the US