Blog Posts: Fda

By Sarah Borron

For decades, farmers have given livestock low doses of antibiotics in their feed to speed growth and prevent infection. And, for decades, scientists and public health officials have warned that this practice, known as “subtherapeutic use,” leads to the creation and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have grown more common both in people and in meat at the grocery store. Doctors encounter patients with infections that are harder to treat and last year, we saw a massive food recall—the third-largest recall of meat in USDA’s records—thanks to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella in ground turkey.

The FDA acknowledges there’s a problem, but has done little to actually rein it in. The agency tracks antibiotic resistance in bacteria in meat and has created regulations to limit subtherapeutic uses in two classes of antibiotics, but has mostly focused on voluntary initiatives, citing lack of resources to implement enforceable rules.

Finally, the warnings from a vast chorus of science, health and consumer experts and the evidence that subtherapeutic use is a serious health concern could no longer be ignored. The last three weeks have brought about promising movement towards curtailing the dangerous practice, but we still have a long way to go.  

First, on March 23, the FDA lost a lawsuit. A federal judge ruled that the agency must act on a proposal it made in 1977 to prevent two antibiotics important to human medicine – tetracyclines and penicillins – from being given routinely to healthy livestock. After citizen petitions in 1999 and 2005 and a lawsuit filed last year, FDA finally took action—quietly withdrawing the proposal just before Christmas—but the federal judge ruled that FDA actually had to address the concerns it identified over thirty years ago. The drug manufacturers will have a chance to make their case that the drugs are safe to feed to livestock routinely. But if they aren’t able to (and science indicates they won’t), the FDA must withdraw its approval of subtherapeutic uses of the drugs. Read the full article…

Food & Water Watch’s Patty Lovera Discusses the Issue on ABC News

By Anna Ghosh

High levels of arsenic in apple juice imported from China and other countries with lax food safety standards was one of the biggest, and scariest, stories of 2011. Now, just a couple weeks into 2012, we’re faced with another imported juice scare.

This week, the FDA sent a letter to the juice industry about the fact that the fungicide carbendazim was found in several samples of orange juice concentrate coming from Brazil. In 2007, 32 percent of orange juice consumed in U.S. was imported, up from 23 percent in 1993. Top importers are Brazil and Mexico.It’s heartening, in this instance, that the FDA is doing its job and testing imported orange juice for toxic pesticide chemicals. But it’s impossible for the under-funded, under-staffed agency to police the tidal wave of food and beverage imports that flood our ports every day.

Exactly how much imported food comes into the U.S. every year? According to the 2008 Food & Water Watch report The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy, each American consumed, on average, 31 pounds of imported fresh vegetables, 20 pounds of imported fresh fruit, and three gallons of imported juice in 2007 alone. And currently less than 2 percent of food and beverage imports get inspected by the FDA.

What’s scarier is that at the end of last year, the World Trade Organization ruled that the United States’ country-of-origin labeling (COOL) program is a violation of international trade law. If the U.S. does not appeal this ruling, Americans will be even more in the dark about where their food is coming from and less able to make informed food choices.

After more than a decade of hard work, the COOL rule was included in the 2008 Farm Bill and has had overwhelming support from both consumers and U.S. producers, despite repeated attempts by the food industry to kill the program and delay its implementation.

COOL doesn’t cover juice concentrate, but it does apply to seafood, meat, and fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables and several kinds of nuts. If COOL goes away, the entire contents of our grocery cart could fall under the category of mystery origins, potentially toxic.

Then there’s the nearly impossible job that U.S. farmers have of contending with foreign meat and produce that’s grown without the same environmental and health requirements we have here. These inferior products are often “dumped” on U.S. consumers, which means domestic farmers can’t compete on price and many are forced out of business, while we, the consumers, are duped into buying inferior quality imported foods and beverages when many of us would prefer to support American farmers.

About a year ago, President Obama took one step forward by signing the Food Safety Modernization Act. But if he doesn’t defend COOL from the WTO, food safety and consumers’ right to information about the origin of their food, will take two steps back. Tell President Obama to keep our food supply safer by appealing the WTO ruling.

For more information:

Action alert: Ask President Obama to appeal WTO ruling on COOL

Global Grocer: Fill your virtual grocery cart with produce from around the world and learn about its hidden dangers

Report: A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports from China

Report: The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy

One month ago, most of us had never heard of hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. HVP is a food additive that rarely shows up on labels in those words. It’s more often listed as seasonings or natural flavorings. It fulfills many of the same functions as MSG without forcing companies to put the dreaded word on their labels.

But in the last month, we’ve had cause to learn what HVP is. From potato chips to seasoning mixes to dips, it seems much of our food is suddenly subject to a recall because of possible salmonella contamination of HVP produced by a Las Vegas company, Basic Food Flavors. The full list of recalled foods is over 150 items, but reports indicate that it could reach over 1,000 items before this is over.

Read the full article…

The USDA finally admitted to a small group of consumer group representatives last week that its official policy is to take very little action when it finds ground beef contaminated with E. coli in commerce. That is, unless several human illnesses have already been identified with the product. I presented a ‚consumer perspective” on this revelation at the joint FDA/FSIS meeting on Joint FDA/FSIS Public Meeting on Tracing Unsafe Meat Products yesterday, along with a small group of representatives from consumer groups, including Food & Water Watch. Read the full article…

The Food Safety Enhancement Act (H.R. 2749) passed last week in the U.S. House of Representatives  by a vote of 283-142.  The bill gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration new mandates and authority to regulate food safety of the 80% of the food supply that falls under its jurisdiction.  It addresses some of the gaping loopholes in the food safety program at FDA that were tragically exposed by a series of food borne illness outbreaks in recent years that sickened and even killed U.S. consumers.  On balance, the bill is a positive first step to correcting the deficiencies at
FDA, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed as the Read the full article…

Those of us who grew up in the 1950‚ fondly remember the Nestle‚ television and radio commercials featuring the wooden puppets Danny ODay and his trusty basset hound sidekick Farfel extolling the virtues of the company‚ cocoa powder for milk.  For those who were not yet born to experience such great culture, Danny ODay would sing: ‚N-E-S-T-L-E-S. Nestle‚ makes the very best” and Farfel would chime in ‚Cha-a-aw-klit.” (If you want to see what I am talking about, there are various renditions of the commercial on the Internet). Back then, Nestle‚ had a wholesome image among U.S. consumers. Read the full article…

Now, it‚ E. coli contamination of all things Toll-House cookie dough.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, 65 people in 29 states have become ill from either eating raw cookie dough or consuming another food item that became contaminated from coming into contact with raw cookie dough. Eating raw cookie dough is never a smart thing to do because there is always a chance that the dough is contaminated with a food-borne pathogen, but the usual culprit is salmonella from unpasteurized eggs , not E. coli which is more commonly associated with beef products. Read the full article…

I’ve never been much of a milk drinker. Born with extremely picky taste buds, I would only pour it into my cereal or use it in some pancake mix. Taste wasn’t too much of an issue for me, so frankly, the amount of fat was all I considered when purchasing milk. Of course everything is way more complicated than that, and growing up I learned about organic milk, but I’ve found even that discussion has its problems. As a new Food & Water Watch (FWW) intern, I’ve learned that there are a large number of factors to bear in mind when buying milk. It’s not only about personal health but also treatment of cattle and environmental impact. Read the full article…

Last week, Food & Water Watch launched a new online interactive tool for you to learn more about where your produce is coming from. The tool is called the “Global Grocer,” and it was inspired by a recent Food & Water Watch report entitled The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy.

Why is it so important to know where your produce is coming from? It’s because, as discussed in the report, Americans are now buying more imported produce than ever before. The concern with that comes from some countries not having equivalent food safety standards, combined with the Food & Drug Administration inspecting less than one percent of food shipments coming into the country. In addition, country-of-origin labeling rules have enough loopholes in them that much of this produce goes unlabeled.

So what exactly is the “Global Grocer”? It is a virtual supermarket, in which you can fill your shopping cart with a variety of fruits and vegetables, and then learn the probabilities of those products being imported and where from. In other words, it is a fun and informative way to learn about food safety, and find out which are the smart decisions to make while shopping for produce.

To give the “Global Grocer” a test drive, you can check it out here. We would also like to thank Poccuo, a local Washington, DC company, for helping us put this project together. Enjoy!

- Food & Water Watch

Can you imagine a food processing company that is given a Certificate of Achievement despite having dry-roasted rodents and salmonella-tainted products at their facilities? It‚ one of the crazy things about the world we live in. Nine deaths and almost 700 illnesses have been counted since the peanut scandal began a few months ago. All because the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) decided to take a few shortcuts and withhold the fact that they had discovered salmonella in some of their production plants. Responsibility for this does not just fall upon PCA, however. The Food & Drug Administration‚ lax oversight, coupled with the sporadic and ineffective use of state inspectors and third party auditors, allowed for this situation to unfold. Read the full article…