Category: Issue 358
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CMAJ Editorial Urges Energy Drink Regulation
“Caffeine-loaded energy drinks have now crossed the line from beverages to drugs delivered as tasty syrups,” opines a July 26, 2010, Canadian Medical Association Journal editorial, which recommends “strict regulations” and warning labels comparable to those required for caffeine tablets. According to the authors, these sweetened beverages pose a unique health risk to adolescents, 73 percent…
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Obesity Eclipses Tobacco as No. 1 Public Health Priority
A recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine has warned that health care reform, rising medical costs and childhood obesity have overtaken tobacco as the top public health priorities, even though smoking “remains by far the most common cause of preventable death and disability in the United States.” Titled “Don’t Forget Tobacco,” the…
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Researchers Find BPA in Cash Register Receipt Paper
Two recently released studies have purportedly found high concentrations of bisphenol A (BPA) in the thermal paper used by many retailers to print cash register receipts. Researchers with the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Massachusetts tested 10 blank cash register receipts from Boston-area businesses and found some had BPA concentrations as high as…
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Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Scales Fall: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?,” The New Yorker, August 2, 2010
In this literature review, The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert recounts the decline of bluefin tuna and other aquatic species due to overfishing, technological advances and lukewarm governance by authorities like the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). According to Kolbert, the world passed “the point of what might be called ‘peak fish’”…
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Conference to Examine Marketing Obesity Prevention
DTC Perspectives Inc. has announced the 2010 Marketing Disease Prevention in America (MDPA) Conference, which will discuss how health care marketing can effectively address obesity prevention. Slated for October 19-21 in Atlanta, Georgia, the conference is designed for advertisers, health and wellness marketers, media representatives, pharmaceutical marketers, public health advocates, and those in the food,…
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American Farm Bureau Censures EU for GM Crop Moratorium
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFB) has issued a policy statement urging the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to “initiate a retaliation process” against the European Union over its de facto moratorium on genetically modified (GM) crops. Despite a 2006 World Trade Organization ruling that found fault with EU approval procedures for GM…
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Procedural Missteps Doom Trade Association Challenge to EPA Rule Ending Domestic Pesticide Tolerances
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld, in part, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) denial of objections filed to its final rule revoking all residues of the pesticide carbofuran permitted on or in raw and processed foods. Nat’l Corn Growers Ass’n v. EPA, No. 09-1284 (D.C. Cir., decided July 23, 2010). EPA revoked the carbofuran…
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FDA Proposes Information Collection on Pet Event Tracking Network
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has solicited feedback on a proposed information collection related to the Pet Event Tracking Network (PETNet). PETNet would allow state and federal regulators “to quickly and effectively exchange information about outbreaks of illness in companion animals associated with pet food.” FDA has envisioned the voluntary system as a “secure,…