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 At 10:30 AM today, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, HHS Secretary Sebelius, and Vice-President Biden will issue “key finding,” according to an email from Nick Shapiro, Office of the Press Secretary, in The White House, that was sent to several media outlets. According to press release, entitled President’s Food Safety Working Group: Delivering Results, the Obama administration is going to implement “a new public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery.” Although these principles are laudable, and anything would be an improvement over the Bush administration’s efforts to put industry profits above the public health, most of what is being announced today is recycled from Clinton years, and all are incremental steps that seek improvements around the edges rather than the much needed structural change to the U.S. food safety system.

What follows is a point-by-point commentary and critique of today’s announced policy changes and renewed initiatives. As I think you will see, there is not a lot radical going on here. (Please click on the Continue Reading link to read more.)Continue Reading Back to the Future: Obama Recycling Clinton-Era Food Safety Initiatives as New

Over the 4th of July holiday, many Americans will get together for picnics, barbeques, and other gatherings.  For many, food will take center stage, and hopefully proper food safety practices will ensure that in the days following these gatherings people will not be doubled-over in pain, running to and from the bathroom because of something…

I’m no longer surprised when we get word of an outbreak associated with some new, seemingly innocuous food item.  Cookie dough for Christ’s sake.  Elissa Elan reported this week that Dunkin Doughnuts learned that its supplier of instant non-fat dried milk and whey protein (Plainview Milk Products Cooperative of Plainview, Minn) had detected Salmonella on…

The FDA announced a recall of milk products on its website yesterday:

Plainview Milk Products Cooperative, Plainview, Minn., is voluntarily recalling instant nonfat dried milk, whey protein, fruit stabilizers, and gums (thickening agents) that it has manufactured over the past two years, because they might be contaminated with Salmonella.

Fortunately, no illnesses have yet…

For any of you out there audacious enough to still consume raw sprouts (click here for a recent discussion of the problem), today’s announcement from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) provides yet another example of why eating raw sprouts is simply not worth the risk.  CDPH announced this afternoon that consumers should not…

Although not really a good defense in the arenas of law or common sense, I was struck by how quickly Nestle suggested that the consumers sickened by eating their contaminated cookie dough were themselves at fault for ignoring the recommendation on the label that the cookies be “bake before consuming.” What most struck me as most odd (and indefensible) about Nestle’s suggestion that the consumer was to blame, is how incongruous it is for Nestle to say that its product was too dangerous to be eaten raw when it manufactures its cookie dough with pasteurized eggs. Prior to this outbreak, few (if any) would have argued that the risk of eating raw cookie dough, to the extent that it was risky at all, came from anything other than the risk of Salmonella poisoning due to the presence of raw eggs. But Nestle had plainly chosen to eliminate that risk. And my guess is that they did so specifically because they knew (and encouraged) people to eat the cookie dough while it was raw, a guilty pleasure of lots and lots of people.Continue Reading You Want a Glass of Milk with that E. coli Cookie?