Tag: food safety
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President Obama Names New FDA Chief to Lead Reform Efforts
President Barack Obama (D) has reportedly tapped former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein to act as her deputy. A bioterrorism expert and physician, Hamburg previously served as an assistant health secretary in the Clinton administration and helped decrease the…
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China Passes New Food Safety Law to Raise Consumer Confidence
Chinese legislators this week passed a new food safety law that consolidates hundreds of regulations, imposes stricter penalties for safety violations and establishes a national commission based in the Ministry of Health to monitor the food and beverage industry, improve standards and authorize product recalls. Effective June 1, 2009, the law will also hold celebrities…
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Kim Severson and Andrew Martin, “It’s Organic, but Does That Mean It’s Safer?,” The New York Times, March 4, 2009
“The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification,” opines this article examining a marketplace perception that organic food is both healthier and safer than conventional products. The authors suggest that…
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Michael Moss and Andrew Martin, “Food Safety Problems Slip Past Private Inspections,” The New York Times, March 6, 2009
“An examination of the largest food poisoning outbreaks in recent years – in products as varied as spinach, pet food, and a children’s snack, Veggie Booty – show that auditors failed to detect problems at plants whose contaminated products later sickened consumers,” claims this article exploring the role of private inspectors in the current food…
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Preliminary Injunction Halts Enforcement of California Slaughterhouse Law
A federal court has granted the meat industry’s motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered California not to enforce a law, adopted on January 1, 2009, that would have required the immediate euthanization of nonambulatory animals in slaughterhouses regulated by the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Nat’l Meat Ass’n v. Brown, No. 08-1963 (E.D. Cal., decided…
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House and Senate Food Safety Bills Continue to Proliferate
With more than a half dozen food-safety bills already pending before the 111th Congress, legislators have continued to introduce or re-introduce legislation from prior sessions to address the government oversight problems exposed by the latest food contamination outbreak. Details about earlier measures appear in issue 291 of this Update. Among the new proposals are: H.R.…
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European Animal Welfare Groups Push for Standards in Global Trade Agreements
European animal advocates and some European Commission (EC) members recently attended a Conference on Global Trade and Farm Animal Welfare in Brussels, Belgium, where they reportedly called on legislators to include animal welfare provisions in all global trade agreements. In particular, EC members noted that animal welfare restrictions have driven up the cost of meat…
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Recalls Prompt Renewed Efforts to Reform Food Safety Laws
A number of bills have already been introduced in the new Congress to overhaul the food safety system in the United States. Driven by concerns that current laws are not providing adequate protection for consumers, House members and Senators have proposed the following measures: H.R. 185 – Introduced January 6, 2009, by Representative José Serrano…