Friends of the Earth is excited to announce our new campaign to prevent genetically engineered fish from hitting our dinner plates: the Campaign for Genetically Engineered (GE)-Free Seafood. Read more
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Time For the Livestock Industry to Move in the Right Direction on Antibiotic Use
As the proverb goes, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Unfortunately, new data released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week shows that the livestock industry continues to move in the wrong direction on antibiotic use—digging all of us into a deeper “hole” when it comes to the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance.
The data shows continued very high levels of antibiotic sales for meat and poultry production, with a steady uptick in overall antibiotics use in the livestock sector over the last decade, culminating in record high sales in 2011. Read more
Will a Federal Compromise on GMO Labeling Trump State Law, Forever?
Recent reports of secret meetings among industry reps and the Food and Drug Adminstration over GMO labeling piqued my interest, mostly because this critical aspect was missing: any effort to label GE foods at the federal level could bring the current grassroots movement to a grinding halt by preventing any stronger local laws from ever being enacted. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Last month, Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association and one of the leaders of the GMO labeling effort, recently published an article about how “representatives of Wal-Mart, General Mills, Pepsi-Frito Lay, Mars, Coca-Cola and others” met with the FDA on January 11 “to lobby for a mandatory federal GMO labeling law.” Read more
3 Steps the FDA Can Take in 2013 to Show It Is Protecting Americans from Harm
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced two sweeping programs for protecting Americans from contamination in our food. Every year tens of thousands of Americans get sick from the presence of Salmonella, E.coli, and other bacteria in the food we eat. These new programs will help prevent some of the contamination from happening in the first place.
This is a welcome departure for an agency better known for paralysis than prevention. Perhaps this bold New Year’s announcement means the FDA is kicking off a new focus on shielding Americans from harm. Or perhaps the agency will simply fall back into its familiar pattern of delay. Read more
FDA Releases Two Long-Awaited Food Safety Rules
After a year-long delay, two sweeping new food safety rules that will for the first time mandate produce safety standards and preventive controls nationwide will be released today and published to the Federal Register on Monday, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It’s a big deal that these two are coming out because it’s the central framework for prevention,” said Michael Taylor, FDA’s Deputy Comissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine, in an interview with Food Safety News. “We’re eager to get to the next phase of the process.” Read more
What Not to Eat: Arsenic!
Never one to pass up an opportunity to spread a little doom and gloom, I felt compelled to emerge from blog-writing hibernation to bring you the latest bummer food news. Today, Consumer Reports released “Arsenic in Your Food,” a report describing its recent investigation of arsenic levels in rice. The results are unsettling. According to the report, analysis of 65 rice and rice products (including infant cereals, hot cereals, ready-to-eat cereals, rice cakes, rice crackers, rice pasta, rice flour and rice drinks) revealed that samples of almost every product contained measurable levels of total arsenic, including organic and inorganic forms. Read more
Court to FDA: Follow the Law on Curbing Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock
On the heels of our March win in court, comes another hugely important victory in our effort to protect public health from the misuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.
A federal court ruled this week that FDA cannot sidestep a decision on whether the use of medically important antibiotics in animal feed is shown to be safe for human health. This decision adds to the building momentum to end the unsafe use of antibiotics in livestock. In this landmark March win, the Court required FDA to withdraw approval for the use of penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed unless drug manufacturers proved that such uses are safe.
Today, the Court directed FDA to reexamine its decision to deny two Citizen Petitions filed in 1999 and 2005, which asked the FDA to stop the unnecessary use of medically important antibiotics on livestock. The Court wrote: Read more
FDA Issues Voluntary Plan to Limit Antibiotics in Agriculture
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking its biggest step yet to rein in the indiscriminate use of antibiotics that help food animals grow bigger, faster. The agency said Wednesday it is asking veterinary drug makers to voluntarily phase out medically important drugs from being available over the counter in the hope that the shift will help combat growing antimicrobial resistance.
Under FDA’s proposal, these antimicrobials will still be allowed in animal agriculture but, if veterinary drug companies agree to change the labels, farmers will be allowed to use the drugs only to prevent, control, or treat diseases and under the supervision of a veterinarian and not for promoting growth or improving feed efficiency.
The agency said it was taking the voluntary action to “preserve the effectiveness of medically important antimicrobials for treating disease in humans.” Read more
Record-breaking One Million Americans Tell FDA: We Have a Right to Know What’s in Our Food
The Just Label It (JLI) Campaign announced today that a record-breaking one million Americans of all political persuasions have called on the FDA to label genetically engineered (GE) foods. Today, March 27, is the date that the FDA is required to respond to the petition. It took JLI and its more than 500 partner organizations less than 180 days to accumulate an historic number of public comments—a testament to the power of collective voices to demand our right to know what’s in our food. (I’ve written about the campaign before here, here, and here.) Read more
So Will That Be the Wild or Patented Salmon?
It looks like 2012 will be the year of two salmons: one a genetically altered “Frankenfish” currently under review by the Food and Drug Administration, and the other an inhabitant of one of the world’s last great wild salmon runs, which is unfortunately situated atop a whole lot of copper and gold deposits. Read more