Please ask President Obama to veto this legislation so that consumers — not industry lobbyists and agri-business cronies — can develop a true food safety bill that will improve this country’s food-safety system, not bog it down with paperwork, smoke and mirrors.
Food/Water Integrity
By Alison Rose Levy With a vote likely imminent on the Food Safety Bill S510 this week, many of us want to call our Senators and weigh in on the impending vote, which will affect food quality, safety and price for years to come. But we aren’t sure exactly how to weigh in because confusion about this bill is so…
Two days of public hearings have passed on the approval of the first genetically engineered (GE) animal intended for human consumption, the AquAdvantage GE salmon — including a U.S. Food and drug Administration (FDA) hearing today to discuss whether or not these GE fish should be labeled as such if they are approved; a 60-day public comment period on the labeling issue will be open until November 22, 2010. But the question of labeling presupposes that allowing is a done deal, despite the fact that the FDA has made up its mind in the absence of proof of any kind, much less anything resembling definitive evidence of safety: for salmon, for the environment and for humans.
By Melanie Warner via www.industry.bnet.com Frito-Lay has decided to reformulate its snacks so that by mid-2011 more than half of the company’s sales will come from products without things like MSG and artificial colorings and flavorings. The move illustrates why PepsiCo (PEP), Frito’s corporate parent, is the most savvy and proactive of the major food companies when it comes to…
By Jane Palmer, Mercury News Correspondent original link: www.mercurynews.com Tom Willey is so concerned about food safety he is willing to bet the farm on it. Literally. Willey and his wife, Densesse, own an organic farm just outside of Madera in the central San Joaquin Valley, where they grow lettuce, carrots, cabbage and nearly 50 other hand-harvested vegetables. They supply…
By Steven Reinberg via www.businessweek.com WEDNESDAY, March 3 (HealthDay News) — Food-borne illnesses cost the United States an estimated $152 billion each year in health-related expenses, much more than previously thought, a new report contends. “These costs are significantly more than previous official estimates, and it demonstrates the serious burden that food-borne illness places on society,” Sandra Eskin, director of…
By Alison Rose Levy via www.health-journalist.com Former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer may have had his sexual peccadilloes but he knew how to stand up to corporate interests that threatened the public good. It was a big boost for oil companies, planning to despoil New York State, when the powerhouse Spitzer was replaced by his easily rolled-over successor. While…
by Jill Richardson January 28, 2010 When it comes to problems with our food system, we’ve got a chicken and egg problem on our hands. Enormous corporations sell most of our food and they use environmentally harmful methods to produce it and put unhealthy ingredients in it – much of which is legal (and sometimes when something is illegal, the…
By Laurent Belsie / January 15, 2010 via www.csmonitor.com Johnson & Johnson burnished its image with a gutsy Tylenol recall in 1982. But its 2010 recall was long overdue, an FDA report charges. In a moment of startling corporate clarity, Johnson & Johnson recalled all its Tylenol from US store shelves in 1982 after capsules tampered with in Chicago were…
by Helena Bottemiller via www.foodsafetynews.com Part three of a three part discussion with Harry Hamil, founder of North Carolina’s Black Mountain Farmers Market, on how he would change the Senate food safety bill to lessen the impact on small and sustainable agriculture Harry Hamil has worked to revive local, healthy food for people in western North Carolina since 1995. He…