Egg producers consolidate, putting us all at risk

Wash Post:

The largest egg recall in U.S. history comes at a point of great consolidation in the egg industry, when a shrinking number of companies produce most of the eggs found on grocery shelves and a defect in one operation can jeopardize a significant segment of the marketplace.

Just 192 large egg companies own about 95 percent of laying hens in this country, down from 2,500 in 1987, according to United Egg Producers, an industry group. Most of those producers are concentrated in five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and California.

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228 million eggs recalled after salmonella outbreak

Somewhere in Spain, "Chris in Paris" is saying "told ya so."

An Iowa egg producer is recalling 228 million eggs after being linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said eggs from Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa, were linked to several illnesses in Colorado, California and Minnesota. The CDC said about 200 cases of the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported weekly during June and July, four times the normal number of such occurrences.

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FDA approves emergency 5-day contraceptive

Good. From ABC:

Federal health officials on Friday approved a new type of morning-after contraceptive that works longer than the current leading drug on the market.

The pill ella from HRA Pharma reduces the chance of pregnancy up to five days after sex. Plan B, the most widely used emergency contraceptive pill, begins losing its ability to prevent pregnancy within three days of sex.

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Is the FDA about to let genetically engineered salmon hit the US market?

From AOL News:

A major U.S. fish research company has tampered with the DNA of Atlantic salmon by adding a quick-growth gene that allows the fish to eat year-around and grow more quickly. And the Food and Drug Administration is about to allow these genetically engineered salmon to head to market, the company says.

But food safety activists insist that the FDA doesn't have adequate tests and regulations to ensure the safety of modified seafood, and others question whether consumers are even ready for it.

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2nd cloned cow accidentally enters UK food chain

I know they claim it's safe. I still find it creepy. Read More......

FDA reviewing antibacterial soap

It's hard not to really like Obama's FDA. The Bush FDA had a partnership with industry that resembled Fox News and the GOP so this has been a very welcome change. Safety for consumers matters.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it was reviewing the safety of triclosan, a widely used antibacterial agent found in soap, toothpaste and a range of other consumer products.

The agency stressed there are no grounds to recommend any changes in the use of triclosan but said some recent studies merited a closer look.

One member of Congress, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, called for strict limits.

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Food company sold contaminated food and knew about it

This is a classic example of why the government and not business should be in the lead for food recalls. The FDA could have pushed this a bit faster but compared to the previous FDA, they are doing an incredible job.

The company responsible for a ballooning recall of processed foods continued to manufacture and distribute a flavor-enhancing ingredient for a month after tests confirmed it was made with contaminated equipment, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

FDA inspectors said the company, Las Vegas-based Basic Food Flavors Inc., knew of salmonella contamination on its equipment after it received the results of a private inspection on Jan. 21. They said the company continued to distribute the ingredient, called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, until Feb. 15.

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FDA orders food recalls

This new FDA is serious. The problems are going to take time to correct after years of letting the factory food industry do whatever they like (and pushing expensive health care costs to consumers) but the change in attitude is impressive. Until Democrats in Congress started to change the rules, there were no recalls unless the company decided to recall a product. This tended to occur after serious problems including death, so getting ahead of the problem makes a lot of sense.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of a common flavor enhancer that could be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

The product, called hydrolyzed vegetable protein or HVP, is potentially in thousands of food products, including soups, sauces, chilis, stews, hot dogs, gravies, seasoned snack foods, dips and dressings. HVP is manufactured by a Las Vegas company.

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FDA warns on false food labels

I'm really starting to like this new FDA. It's amazing what a new team can do.

U.S. health regulators warned units of Nestle and more than a dozen other foodmakers about overstating or misstating the nutritional value of baby food, nuts and other products on their labels.

Most of the letters made public on Wednesday accuse the companies of making claims on their food packages and websites over trans fat content, antioxidant advantages, and omega-3 benefits that fail to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

The warnings come as the FDA is set to push for new package labeling to make it easier for people to understand the nutritional content of food.

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And yet another reason why the FDA needs to get back to its mission

It's too expensive to do otherwise. This new study shows how expensive it is for consumers. The Republicans always love to talk about the high cost of regulations and oversight for business but they conveniently forget about the cost to everyone else. Sure business wants to cut costs but as this study shows, the costs are pushed out to others. Obama has been moving the FDA in the right direction and Democrats in Congress have been leading the way since coming back into power but there's more to be done.

Food-borne illnesses, such as E. coli and salmonella, cost the United States $152 billion annually in health care and other losses, according to a report released Wednesday by a food safety group.

The report comes as the U.S. Senate considers legislation that would require more government inspections of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls, among other things. The House passed a similar bill last year.

The government estimates 76 million people each year are sickened by food-borne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and about 5,000 die. Recent outbreaks have resulted in large recalls of peanuts, spinach and peppers.

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Doctors want hot dogs redesigned

This is a fascinating article. It's the way 60 minutes used to be, like two decades ago. You'd watch one guy and think "he's right." Then you'd watch the other guy and think "he's right." I really enjoy articles that challenge your underlying beliefs. I heard about this, that doctors wanted to force the redesign of hot dogs to make them safer for kids, and thought "this is ridiculous." Now, not so much.

"The most common cause of death for kids aged roughly 1 to 5 is choking...

Hot dogs are a prime offender, accounting for 17 percent of food-related asphyxiations in children under the age of 10, according to one study.

"If you were to take the best engineers in the world and asked them to design a perfect plug for a child's airway, you couldn't do better than a hot dog," Smith said. "It's the right size, right shape. It's compressible so it wedges itself in. When they're in that tight [it's] almost impossible, even with the correct training and the correct equipment, to get out. When it's wedged in tightly, that child is going to die."

Other high-risk foods include hard candy, peanuts and nuts, even peanut butter.

The article warns about small candies as well. And if you think about it, they're exactly the size of small things you'd normally keep out of your kids' hands, lest they choke. As for peanut butter, I remember the only time in my life I actually choked on food for real - meaning, total stoppage of air, couldn't even breathe enough to cough or hack, just utter horrifying silence - was while eating a Snickers in undergrad. Somehow got a piece of the ooey gooey candy lodged in my wind pipe. Couldn't breathe, couldn't even make a sound. I remember frantically trying to get the attention of the people I was walking with, because when you're really choking, you're silent. My two friends, upon realizing I was desperately grabbing for my throat, immediately started screaming "he's choking, he's choking," while not giving me the Heimlich. Fortunately, some guy came running from across the street and went to work on me.

Choking for real, not coughing choking, but silent choking, is a pretty horrifying thing. And a very small kid can't walk over and hit you in the arm to let you know he's about to die. Read More......

More signs of life from the FDA

The Obama FDA is worlds apart from the business-focused Bush FDA. It has to be one of the highlights of the Obama administration so far. If only we saw the same movement from some of the other teams that answer to the president.

Under the Obama administration, the F.D.A. has stepped up scrutiny of drug advertising, dispatching many warning letters about misleading commercials and online marketing efforts. But this is believed to be the first time the agency has warned an individual investigator — a medical researcher who oversees a clinical trial — for apparently promoting an unapproved drug.

Dr. Baumann is far from the only cosmetic doctor to have jumped the gun. Some talk show hosts and beauty editors (including this reporter in her previous job at W magazine) have often turned to clinical investigators for news of the latest cosmetic medical treatments.

Now, some industry experts say the F.D.A. warning may curb the media enthusiasm of certain cosmetic doctors who until now have provided scoops about coming medical products — or have talked up the latest unapproved cosmetic uses for drugs and devices that the agency had approved only for other purposes.

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FDA investigating BPA in food packaging

Now would be a good time to get rid of it. Obama's FDA has come a long way since the dark years of the Bush administration, when industry could call all of the shots.

In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008.

The agency said Friday that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children,” and would join other federal health agencies in studying the chemical in both animals and humans.

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Cows are eating chicken what?

The new FDA is getting back in the business of protecting consumers after an eight year drought. This sounds like a reasonable request. I don't eat at McDonald's but well done for joining the call for change. A large buyer like that carries a lot of weight which in this case, is good news.

A coalition of food and consumer groups that includes Consumers Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest has asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban the practice of feeding chicken feces and other poultry farm waste to cattle. McDonald's Corp., the nation's largest restaurant user of beef, also wants the FDA to prohibit the feeding of so-called poultry litter to cattle.

Members of the coalition are threatening to file a lawsuit or to push for federal legislation establishing such a ban if the FDA doesn't act to do so in the coming months.

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FDA is back in business

Paying attention to thinking about consumers again? What a crazy idea!

The Smart Choices nutrition labeling program, created voluntarily by nine large U.S. manufacturers, is halting after federal regulators said such systems could mislead consumers, officials with the labeling group said Friday.

Industry leaders launched the program this year to highlight foods that meet certain nutritional standards with a green label on package fronts.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that such programs may mislead consumers about the health benefits of certain foods, and it told manufacturers it will crack down on inaccurate labeling. It did not criticize specific products or label programs or give a timeline for enforcement.

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Project Censored, 2010

Along with the pleasure of nature's excessive beauty, October brings the newest edition of Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories.

The compilation is a year-long project of Sonoma State University, managed by students of the School of Social Sciences who submit news which they think has been underreported, ignored, misrepresented or otherwise censored by the US corporate news outlets. These stories are then judged by a panel who presently or in the past has included Noam Chomsky, Susan Faludi, Howard Zinn, Erna Smith, until a final 25 stories are selected for publication.

Because of our recent discussions here at AMERICAblog about dangerous and even lethal Chinese products now flooding our markets, #5 on the list, an article titled Europe Blocks US Toxic Products, jumped out at me:

Hundreds of companies located in the US produce or import hundreds of chemicals designated as dangerous by the European Union. Large amounts of these chemicals are being produced in thirty-seven states, in as many as eighty-seven sites per state, according to biochemist Richard Denison of Environmental Defense Fund, author of the report “Across the Pond: Assessing REACH’s First Big Impact on US Companies and Chemicals.”


Of the 267 chemicals on the potential REACH list, compiled by the International Chemical Secretariat in Sweden, only one third have ever been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and only two are regulated in any form under US law.

Industry’s evisceration of the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and a host of regulatory agencies, has placed US firms in a position of unaccountability.

As a result of the contrast between US deregulation and the spreading European model of regulation, the US has become the dumping ground for toxic toys, electronics and cosmetics. We produce and consume the toxic materials, from which other countries around the world are protected.

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Chinese drywall nightmare grows - did you know they're poisoning our food too?

From the NYT. What really worries me is, what don't we import from China? And what kind of poisons have they let slip by their crappy quality control?

How about food - check out this article form the Wash Post two years ago:

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

We shouldn't let a drop of food enter this country that's come from China. It's one thing to hope that my tshirt doesn't contain some poison, but food? Read More......

FDA confirms E. coli in Nestlé Toll House cookie dough

How exactly does something from inside the intestines of cows make it in cookie dough? The factory food industry continues to be a problem but at least there's some interest in Washington in changing that system.

The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it had confirmed the presence of E. coli 0157, a deadly strain of bacteria, in samples of Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough produced at the company's plant in Danville, Va.

Investigators did not find the bacterium inside the factory or on equipment but in a tub of chocolate cookie dough made at the site in February, said David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food safety at the FDA. The dough had a June 10 expiration date.
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Nestlé voluntarily recalled 30,000 cases of its refrigerated cookie dough on June 19 after officials at the FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspected that dozens of cases of E. coli-related illness were linked to the product.

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Nestle recalls Toll House cookie dough

I have some in my fridge. This is just getting creepier and creepier. Now we have E. coli in cookies. Read More......

FDA wakes up, issues warning

Hasn't this news been out for at least 10 year, maybe even 20 or more? The FDA has been so deep in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry it's a wonder they ever manage to say anything. It's small and overdue but it's progress.

A Food and Drug Administration report released Wednesday recommends stronger warnings and dose limits on drugs containing the painkiller acetaminophen, citing an increased risk of liver injury.

The recommendation covers both prescription doses and over-the-counter medication, of which Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol is the most well-known. Acetaminophen is also widely available as a generic over-the-counter drug.

"There is extensive evidence that hepatotoxicity (liver toxicity) caused by acetaminophen use may result from lack of consumer awareness that acetaminophen can cause severe liver injury," the working group report said.

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