BPA is widely used in shatter-proof plastic baby bottles, sippy cups, and the lining of formula cans and leaches out of these containers into food. Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, has long warned of the dangers of BPA in food containers, particularly for fetuses, infants, and small children. Our precautionary advice to consumers is based on more than 200 scientific studies that show clear links between tiny amounts of exposure to BPA and subsequent increased risk of cancer, diabetes, reproductive, neurological, and developmental disorders.

Studies show that BPA is in the bloodstreams of more than 90 percent of the population at levels that have shown harm in animal studies. And food appears to be a primary source of exposure. Children may metabolize BPA more slowly than adults and may therefore be particularly vulnerable to BPA, which has also been linked to early puberty, breast cancer, childhood obesity, autism, and hyperactivity.

Because of the existing and growing body of scientific knowledge about the health risks of BPA to consumers, the American Medical Association recently announced support for a ban on BPA-containing baby bottles and infant feeding cups and called on the industry to take action to stop producing them.

There’s also a growing industry movement against BPA. Many of the largest manufacturers of baby bottles no longer make their bottles with the chemical. In addition, major retailers are in the process of phasing out selling baby bottles with BPA, or have already done so. Moreover, chemical giant and BPA manufacturer Sunoco, acknowledging the safety concerns about BPA, announced it would restrict the sales of the toxin for use in baby bottles and food containers for children under three.

The Department of Toxic Substances, which oversees California’s Green Chemistry Initiative, slated to regulate chemicals in the state, recognizes the importance of banning BPA from children’s food and drink containers immediately with this legislation. The Green Chemistry program has become bogged down with long delays and will not be functional soon enough to protect the 550,000 babies born in California each year from the health risks of BPA.

The Department’s letter of support for this BPA ban states [PDF], “In light of the information available regarding the potential health effects of bisphenol A and the regulatory actions already taken by a number of other states and countries, DTSC believes it is prudent to restrict the use of bisphenol A in a narrow range of products such as children’s infant bottles and cups.”

The writing is on the wall: Harmless alternatives to BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups are in demand. With the signing of this bill, California can signal that big chemical company money cannot trump the health of babies and toddlers.

Originally published on Huffington Post

The bill, with the Tester-Hagan small farm exemption intact, now goes back to the House. But the action will likely put the food safety law on President Obama’s desk before Christmas.

“Yes, consumers, there is a Santa Claus!,” the Consumer Federation of America effused.

Sunday’s Senate move came as a surprise, especially because no Republican objected to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s request for his colleagues to pass the food safety bill by unanimous consent.

No one objected, not even Republican Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn.

“Tonight we unanimously passed a measure to improve on our current food safety system by giving the FDA the resources it needs to keep up with advances in food production and marketing, without unduly burdening farmers and food producers,” Reid said in a statement.

The majority leader said this marks the first time in almost a century that the food safety system has been updated in such a broad manner. He called it a “common-sense issue with broad bipartisan support.”

Reid’s success Sunday night was not even predicted by his own staff earlier in the day.

The food safety bill has had a tortured life. The House passed its version (H.R 2749) in July of 2009 by a vote of 283 to 142. The Senate did not move on its version (S. 510) until last month after a compromise (the Tester-Hagan Amendment) was reached between Small Ag, Big Ag and consumer groups. The final vote was 73 to 25.

However, Section 107 of S. 510 contained a fee provision that the House Parliamentarian considered a tax in violation of the “Origination Clause” of the Constitution, which states that the House must initiate revenue measures.

The House then appended S. 510 to the “Omnibus Spending Bill,” in essence the 2011 Budget. That bill was narrowly approved by a 212 to 206 vote, but when the Senate refused to take up the spending bill, the food safety legislation was left in limbo–until Sunday evening.

The bill’s goal is to increase the Food and Drug Administration’s powers to keep food safe by increasing inspections of food facilities, placing stricter standards on imported foods and giving the agency broader authority to order a recall.

As word of the bill’s new life got out, advocates expressed their relief. Many were part of a coalition that had sent a letter Sunday to Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, asking them to act quickly to save the bill before the end of the session.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said, “The Senate made good on its promise to pass food safety legislation tonight when it passed a corrected version of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. It is a huge victory for consumers following a weekend cliffhanger as both consumer and industry supporters prepared for bad news. Senator Harkin, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell are to be congratulated on their skill in making sure American families will enjoy greater protection and safer food in 2011 and beyond.”

Jean Halloran, director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union, said, “This is a wonderful day for consumers. This day will be especially important to families whose children have suffered lasting damage to their health, and families who have even lost a child, because of contaminated food. Many of them have worked hard for this bill to prevent others from having to go through a similar ordeal. This bill gives FDA essential tools like mandatory recall authority to insure that the food we eat is safe.”

Originally published on Food Safety News.

Consumer Reports’ latest tests of 42 samples from cans and pouches of tuna bought primarily in the New York metropolitan area and online confirm that white (albacore) tuna usually contains far more mercury than light tuna. According to Consumers Union, pregnant women should avoid tuna and younger women and kids should limit their consumption.

“Canned tuna, especially white, tends to be high in mercury, and younger women and children should limit how much they eat. As a precaution, pregnant women should avoid tuna entirely,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Director of Technical Policy, at Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advise that women of childbearing age and young children may eat up to 12 ounces a week of light tuna or other “low in mercury” seafood, including, within that limit, up to 6 ounces per week of white tuna.

Consumers Union’s fish-safety experts continue to suggest a more cautious approach, advising pregnant women, as a precaution, to avoid eating tuna because of its potential effects on fetal development. Consumers Union further advises that children who weigh more than 45 pounds limit their weekly intake from 4 to 12.5 ounces of light tuna or from 1.5 to 4 ounces of white tuna, depending on their weight; and children who weigh less than 45 pounds limit their weekly intake from 0 to 4 ounces of light tuna or from 0 to 1.5 ounces of white tuna, depending on their weight.

Consumer Reports’ tests, conducted at an outside lab, found:

• Every sample contained measurable levels of mercury, ranging from 0.018 to 0.774 parts per million (ppm). The FDA can take legal action to pull products containing 1 ppm or more from the market. (It never has, according to an FDA spokesman.)
• Samples of white tuna had 0.217 to 0.774 ppm of mercury and averaged 0.427 ppm. By eating 2.5 ounces (about half a can) of any of the tested samples, a woman of childbearing age would exceed the daily mercury intake that EPA considers safe.
• Samples of light tuna had 0.018 to 0.176 ppm and averaged 0.071 ppm. At that average, a woman of childbearing age eating 2.5 ounces would get less than the EPA’s limit, but for about half the tested samples, eating 5 ounces (about one can) would exceed the limit.

In 2006, Consumer Reports scrutinized [PDF] the results of the FDA’s tests in 2002 to 2004 of mercury levels in hundreds of samples of canned tuna. The agency’s white-tuna samples averaged 0.353 ppm; light tuna, 0.118 ppm. But Consumer Reports found that as much as six percent of the FDA’s light-tuna samples had at least as much mercury as the average in white tuna—in some cases more than twice as much.

Given the uncertainties about the impact of occasional fetal exposure to such high levels, Consumer Reports urged the FDA to warn consumers about occasional spikes in mercury levels in canned light tuna. More than four years later, the FDA still hasn’t issued such a warning. When asked why by Consumers Union, an FDA spokesman indicated to the group that the agency had already taken the spikes into account when formulating its mercury advice.

“The FDA should strengthen its current guidance and advise pregnant women to avoid tuna altogether, especially given the uncertainties about the impact of occasional fetal exposure to high mercury levels,” said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union. “The FDA should also continue to test for mercury across the spectrum of fish and seafood in the marketplace in order to provide consumers with adequate information on the mercury levels of all fish.”

Halloran noted that there may well be other species that vulnerable groups like pregnant women should avoid, but the FDA needs to conduct more testing to draw conclusions. “The last set of FDA data gathered from 2002-2004 and published in 2006 needs to be updated and the sample size of many species should be increased,” she said.

Heavy metal accumulates in tuna and other fish in an especially toxic form, methylmercury, which comes from mercury released by coal-fired power plants and other industrial or natural sources. According to Consumers Union, some studies have linked even low-level mercury exposure in pregnant women and young children to subtle impairments in hearing, hand-eye coordination, and learning ability. Other evidence [PDF] suggests that frequent consumption of high-mercury fish might affect adults’ neurologic, cardiovascular, and immune systems. The body is slow to eliminate mercury so it can accumulate in people over time.

Fish are rich in protein, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids. Studies have shown that omega-3s reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke and might also elevate mood and help prevent certain cancers, cognitive decline, and certain eye diseases. During pregnancy, omega-3s might help in developing the fetus’s brain and visual system.

“Fortunately, it’s easy to choose lower-mercury fish that are also rich in healthful omega-3 fatty acids,” Dr. Rangan said. “That’s especially important for women who are pregnant or might become pregnant, nursing mothers, and young children, because fetuses and youngsters are still developing their nervous systems and are therefore at particular risk from methylmercury’s neurotoxic effects.”

Federal agencies advise children and women of childbearing age to avoid four high-mercury fish: king mackerel, shark, swordfish, and tilefish.

So what kind of seafood is safe to eat? According to Rangan, popular seafood, including clams, Alaskan salmon, shrimp, and tilapia, contain relatively little mercury and are better choices. Other lower-mercury choices include: oysters, pollock, sardines, Pacific flounder and sole, herring, mullet, and scallops (with some limitations for women of child-bearing age and children).

The story appears in the January 2011 issue of Consumer Reports and is also available free online.

Photo: Kiruh via Flickr

Schlosser is now joining with Consumers Union to urge consumers to fight for passage of FDA food safety reform legislation, which passed the House of Representatives last year and is now stalled awaiting action in the Senate.

That we need better measures to insure food safety is indisputable. Deaths from eating ordinary foods, from spinach to peanut butter, have made that clear. Leafy green processors, peanut butter factories, and other high-risk facilities should be inspected at least once a year, not once a decade, as FDA currently averages. FDA should have the authority to order recalls of tainted food, and not have to wheedle and cajole to get a company to retrieve a contaminated product. These changes are incorporated in S. 510, the FDA food safety bill pending in the Senate.

That we need a more sustainable food production system, one that involves smaller, more diverse, local production, is also clear. At the urging of the sustainable farming community, and supported by Consumers Union, provisions to protect sustainable farming have been incorporated into S. 510. The bill requires FDA to develop new food safety standards in consultation with USDA that cannot be in conflict with organic standards. FDA must consider maintaining biological diversity, impact on small farms, conservation and the environment in setting standards. FDA must also take into account the needs of small businesses, and give small businesses more time to meet the new food safety standards.

As Schlosser says, it makes no sense to continue to let the food industry regulate itself. The Senate should pass S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act now. You can urge Congress do so here.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a United Nations agency that develops food safety and labeling standards. Its standards carry weight because they are used to settle disputes at the World Trade Organization. The Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) meets in Quebec City, Canada May 3-7, 2010 to discuss the labeling issue.

The letter refers specifically to a position, drafted by USDA and FDA, that opposes a Codex document stating that countries can adopt different approaches to labeling of GE food, in line with existing Codex guidance. The current U.S. draft position goes even further to say that mandatory labeling of food as GE/GM “is likely to create the impression that the labeled food is in some way different” and would therefore be “false, misleading or deceptive.”

“We are concerned that the current U.S. position could potentially create significant problems for food producers in the U.S. who wish to indicate that their products contain no GE ingredients. Organic food in particular, which prohibits GE ingredients, are frequently labeled ‘GE-free’ or ‘No GMOs’. A recent CU poll [PDF] found that two-thirds of consumers would be concerned if they thought that GE/GM ingredients were in organic food,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.

The U.S. position paper states that Codex should not “suggest or imply that GM/GE foods are in any way different from other foods.” However, Dr. Hansen stated, “Such foods clearly are different. USDA organic rules specifically state that GE seed cannot be used in organic production. The FDA has also taken the position that within the U.S., voluntary labeling as to whether or not a product contains GE ingredients is permissible.”

The letter to USDA and FDA is signed by the Organic Trade Association, the Organic Consumers Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Organic Coalition, and R-CALF USA, among many others.

“We find it hard to understand how FDA and USDA can argue to Codex that mandatory labeling is inherently false and misleading, but voluntary labeling, which is permitted in the United States, is not,” the groups state. “We are, in fact, concerned that the current U.S. position appears to seek to establish precedents at Codex that would make it difficult to label food as non-GM within the U.S.”

The groups also urge the U.S. to not allow trade goals to interfere with or overrule judgments made on sound science and existing policy.

Join CREDO Action in calling on the U.S. delegation to the Codex Committee meeting, led by representatives of FDA and USDA, to drop these positions and support proposals to allow countries to make their own decisions on the labeling of GE foods.

Yoplait yogurt, the 19th largest dairy processor in the country, announced today that by August of this year, all Yoplait branded products will be made with milk that is 100 percent farmer certified to come from cows not treated with rbGH (or recombinant bovine growth hormone) an artificial hormone also known as rbST (recombinant bovine somatotropin).

In an e-mail announcement sent out Friday, Yoplait noted that it’s the first leading yogurt brand to go “rbGH-free,” which may come as a surprise to companies such as Stonyfield, Nancy’s, Cascade Fresh, Brown Cow, and other organic industry leaders, all of which have been in the forefront of the movement to reject the synthetic hormone in milk products.

“It’s an honor to welcome them into the no-rbGH club,” said Gary Hirschberg, the Stonyfield CE-Yo. “Better Yo-Late than Yo-Never.” In 1993, Stonyfield was the first dairy in the U.S. to secure agreements with milk suppliers not to use artificial hormones like rbGH (trade name Posilac) soon after it was introduced.

The use of rbGH has been linked to increased rates of infections in dairy cows, elevated antibiotic use, and unresolved questions about its links to serious human health risks, including cancer. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all 25 members of the European Union have banned the use of rbGH, and the Codex Alimentarius, the United Nations’ main food safety body, twice decided that it could not endorse the safety of rbGH for human health.

In case you can’t recall why U.S. companies have been pumping cows full of this junk for 16 years, just a small reminder that rbGH was brought to us by Monsanto, which has much sway in our government. (For the seminal article on the chemical giant, read the piece in Vanity Fair.) And, in yet another winning decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency gave its seal of approval, despite serious questions about the safety of rbGH.

According to the Breast Cancer Action (BCA), when rbGH is injected into a cow, that cow’s milk will contain higher amounts of another powerful hormone called insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1). IGF-1 is natural and necessary, but too much of it may cause health problems. Studies have shown that elevated levels of IGF-1 in humans may increase the risk of breast cancer. More research is needed to better understand whether the elevated levels of IGF-1 in milk make their way into our bloodstream. Although it hasn’t yet been proven that the use of rbGH will definitively lead to breast cancer, BCA notes that the current evidence is cause for concern and for action.

Slight problem: Yoplait, owned by General Mills, marketed its yogurt as being healthy for women, and participated in breast cancer awareness projects, including pledging a 10-cent donation to a breast cancer organization for every pink lid consumers mailed back to the company.  Because Yoplait yogurt was made with milk from cows injected with rbGH, there was a contradiction in their message.

Yoplait’s move away from rbGH can be linked in large part to the BCA’s Think Before You Pink campaign—which demands transparency and accountability on the part of companies that align themselves with breast cancer and urges companies to do all they can to ensure their products don’t contribute to the high rates of the disease. BCA uses the term “pinkwashing” to describe companies, like Yoplait, that participated in breast cancer fundraising or “awareness” campaigns but manufactured products that may be linked to the disease.

One of the reasons the Yoplait campaign was successful is due in large part to consumer education efforts by organizations such as the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “When Yoplait says that they’re dropping rbGH because of consumer demand, they’re not kidding,” said Rick North, PSR’s Project Director for Safe Food, who has been on the frontlines of this effort. “They’ve received thousands of postcards from all over the country opposing rbGH and also letters from hospitals and colleges expressing their displeasure with the hormone. This was not only the right thing for them to do, it was the smart thing.”

As it turns out, Americans don’t want their milk messed with. A recent Consumers Union poll [PDF] revealed that 70 percent of consumers polled are concerned about dairy cows being given synthetic growth hormones and 93 percent of consumers agree that dairies that produce milk and milk products without artificial growth hormones should be allowed to label their products as being free of these hormones.

Consumer demand for rbGH-free dairy led big retailers like Wal-Mart, Krogers, Starbucks, Tillamook, Safeway and Chipotle Restaurants to get on the milk wagon and phase out the hormone in all of their dairy products. California Dairies, Inc., which produces nearly 10 percent of the nation’s milk, went rbGH-free last year. And, by the end of summer 2009, the New England dairy industry will be rbGH-free as well.

Faced with dwindling sales of rbGH, Monsanto tried to thwart informed consumer choice by pressuring the FDA and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to restrict labeling of such products as “rbGH-free.” That didn’t work out too well, so Monsanto and their supporters launched a state-by-state assault attempting to ban or restrict rbGH-free labeling in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Utah, and Missouri. So far, these attempts have not been successful, as dozens of farmers, environmental and consumer groups joined forces to beat them back. Still limping along, a bogus non-profit called American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT) was formed last year to join the battle. This “grassroots” group received funding from Monsanto and was formed by Osborne and Barr, a PR firm founded by two ex-Monsanto employees. Seems that AFACT is actually ALIE.

In the meantime, stay tuned and ready for action to make sure your favorite dairy can continue to label their products “rbGH-free”. Be sure to buy rbGH-free milk from one of the aforementioned brands, and even better, buy organic. Click on your state to find a list of rbGH-free dairy brands at Sustainable Table.