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.”

According to the most recent estimates, around 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are given to animals. FDA said it doesn’t know what percentage is used for growth promotion or so-called production uses, which the agency is trying to limit.

The reaction in the public health, veterinary pharmaceutical and animal agriculture community was mixed, but mostly negative.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which has been lobbying for limiting antibiotic usage in food animal production for years, gave the move a tepid thumbs up.

“This is the most sweeping action the agency has undertaken in this area, as this covers all antibiotics used in meat and poultry production that are important to human health,” said Laura Rogers, director of the Pew’s Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming. “There are some gaps in these measures that we will urge FDA to address and, because this is voluntary, we will have to monitor antibiotic usage and resistance rates carefully. If these measures do not bring down antibiotic use and drug-resistant bacteria, then FDA will have to take additional steps.”

The Animal Health Institute, which represents veterinary pharmaceutical companies, also said it supports the FDA’s voluntary stakeholder approach, but has reservations.

“We strongly support responsible use of antibiotic medicines and the involvement of a veterinarian whenever antibiotics are administered to food producing animals,” said AHI. “While we agree with this direction and the collaborative, stakeholder process, there are details that must be addressed to make this approach practical and workable.  We will continue to work with FDA through the comment process to address these details.”

Most consumer and pubic health groups expressed disappointment that the proposal is voluntary and seems toothless.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest called the plan “tragically flawed” because it relies on the industry to voluntarily act in the best interest of consumers, though it did applaud the agency for recognizing the “public health imperative” to address the problem.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, which has been working on the issue for years, was also critical of the voluntary move.

“The approach announced represents a bold, well-intentioned attempt by the FDA to persuade an entire industry to voluntarily abandon claims that allow them to sell a large number of lucrative products,” said Margaret Mellon, the group’s senior scientist. “We have no reason to believe that the veterinary pharmaceutical industry–which, to date, has rarely even acknowledged that antibiotic resistance is a serious public health issue–will cooperate with the agency on a plan that could reduce its profits.”

The National Pork Producers Council blasted the proposal, arguing that it would be burdensome for producers in remote areas who have trouble getting access to veterinary care. NPPC called the plan “problematic” for pork producers, and said it believes the move would not only have a negative effect on animal health, but also increase the cost or producing food.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) called the announcement “a step in the right direction,” but said she believed “much more must be done.”

“Antibiotic-resistant diseases now kill more Americans than AIDS and this issue needs to be treated with the seriousness it deserves,” said Slaughter, who has introduced legislation on the issue. “Of course if an animal is sick it should be treated, but the misuse of antibiotics in animal feed is destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics and limiting our ability to treat human illnesses.”

“Nonbinding recommendations are not a strong enough antidote to the problem,” added Slaughter.

It is not clear exactly how FDA will measure progress on its voluntary initiative. If drug companies agree to change their labels over the next few months, they are to notify FDA and then they have three years to voluntarily phase in the changes.

Agency officials were hesitant to say whether the public should expect a significant drop in overall antibiotics usage. Michael Taylor, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods, said that if progress is not what the agency expected then FDA will look at other regulatory options.

The FDA’s voluntary guidance is independent of a recent court order that directed the agency to revive a 35-year-old proposal to ban three antibiotics from animal feed–penicillin and two types of tetracycline–pending hearings.

In 1977, FDA determined these three antibiotics were likely contributing to drug-resistant bacteria strains in humans and should be reserved for only therapeutic uses. But the agency never held the drug company hearings required to put this proposal into place, and in December of 2011 it revoked these approval withdrawals altogether. In March 2012, a federal court ruled that FDA had to revisit the issue.

Originally published on Food Safety News

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.)

The campaign also announced today a new national survey revealing that more than nine out of 10 Americans across the political spectrum supports labeling food that has been genetically engineered. This new infographic is a compelling visual that shares the results of the survey.

New Survey Results: Motherhood, Apple Pie and GE Food Labeling

Voter support for GE-foods labeling in the U.S. is nearly unanimous, according to the political opinion survey on GE food labeling conducted by The Mellman Group on behalf of JLI. Explained pollster Mark Mellman, “Few topics other than motherhood and apple pie can muster over 90 percent support, but labeling GE-foods is one of those few views held almost unanimously.” The survey found nearly all Democrats (93% favor, 2% oppose), Independents (90% favor, 5% oppose) and Republicans (89% favor, 5% oppose) in favor of labeling. The study also revealed that support for labeling is robust and arguments against it have little sway.

In the era of pink slime, BPA in our soup and deadly melons, we have a right more than ever to know about what’s in our food. The FDA needs to restore confidence in our food and our right to know about the food we eat and feed our families. It’s time for the FDA to give Americans the same rights held by citizens in over 40 nations, including all of our major trade partners, to know whether our foods have been genetically modified.

Stay tuned as the campaign now works to make sure that the FDA and Washington knows that one million Americans are watching to make sure they deliver.

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.

Our first salmon represents a giant step into the unknown of genetically engineered organisms. AquaBounty, a company originally incorporated to produce antifreeze, is trying to get FDA approval of its very own patented salmon species called “AquAdvantage.” If approved, the purportedly sterile, all-female salmon would be the first-ever market-approved, genetically engineered protein to reach our dinner plates. But in the absurd world of engineered food, the FDA is not reviewing AquAdvantage salmon as “fish,” rather it’s being studied as a “new animal drug.” A new animal drug–sorry, “fish”–that wouldn’t require labeling on grocery shelves or menus.

Three consumer groups–Food and Water Watch, Consumers Union and the Center for Food Safety–recently submitted a petition calling on the FDA to reclassify the genetically altered fish so that it undergoes a more rigorous review process. Even the current Congress has taken note, with at least 30 House members and 14 senators having written the Obama administration expressing serious concerns about the FDA’s review of AquAdvantage salmon, in some cases calling for the outright prohibition of its approval for human consumption.

In a hearing last December, Four Fish author Paul Greenberg told a Senate subcommittee that “This fish is not worth the risk. We would be better pursuing a course of truly sustainable aquaculture and better management and use of our wild fisheries.”

Which brings us to our second salmon of 2012, one that swims wild and free but faces a big crisis in Southwestern Alaska. Several mining corporations think that Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon run, would be a great place to hollow out what would be one of the largest open-pit mines on the planet. In digging out deposits of copper and gold, the Pebble Minecomplex would require an immense containment pond to hold up to 10 billion tons of mine waste, all held back by nine miles of dams reaching up to 740 feet high. For perspective, the Hoover Dam is 726 feet high and a relatively meager 1,200 feet wide, so we’re talking potentially 40 Hoover Dams stretching across the Alaskan wilderness.

This risky development would straddle two of the Bay’s most important salmon streams and, just to keep things really interesting, sit on top of a seismically-active zone. And the Pebble Mine may be just the start of much more mineral excavation in the region, because the massive investment in infrastructure that the mine would require–roads, pipelines, a shipping port–will likely lead to even more mining proposals. Proponents of course cite the new jobs that the mine would create, about 1,000 long-term jobs according to the Pebble Partnership, while perhaps conveniently ignoring the thousands of local jobs already supported by the sustainably-managed salmon fishery in the region–jobs that could be put in jeopardy if the project is approved.

The Pebble Mine’s future may be decided this summer. Congress will conduct hearings on the project by June, while an alliance of sportsmen, Alaska tribes, native corporations, commercial fishermen and even chefs from across the country are petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke its Clean Water Act authority and protect this important salmon spawning and wildlife habitat.

So, 2012, which salmon will it be for dinner: wild or patented? That depends on whether we decide if protecting one of the last wild stocks trumps the profit potential (for a selected few) that gold and copper mining presents. It also depends on whether we think allowing genetically modified fish on grocery shelves is acceptable, despite not fully understanding the health and environmental costs. Which do you prefer? We know what sounds good to us.

Originally published at Ecocentric.

Photo: Salmon run by Shutterstock

“Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the drug is controversial,” Bottemiller writes. “Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has sickened or killed more of them than any other livestock drug on the market, Food and Drug Administration records show. Cattle and turkeys have also suffered high numbers of illnesses from the drug.”

According to the story, USDA meat inspectors have reported an increase in “downer pigs”–livestock that is unable to walk–who have been fed ractopamine. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously voted down a California ban on “downer” livestock being used in the food supply, on the basis of a federal preemption.

Bottemiller explains that ractopomine acts like a stress hormone, increasing heart rate and relaxing blood vessels. Its use in livestock agriculture produces up to 10 percent more meat, raising profits $2 per head. Though the drug has not been considered for human use, it is administered up until slaughter, and minute traces have been found in meat.

While these amounts have not exceeded the threshold the FDA has deemed safe, there is no allowance for the drug in the E.U. and China, where 70 percent of the world’s pork is consumed, and where the drug is currently banned. Acceptance of meat from animals raised on ractopamine in world markets has become a focus for U.S. trade officials. Bottemiller writes: “Resolving the impasse is now a top agricultural trade priority for the Obama administration, which is trying to boost exports and help revive the economy.”

At the heart of the trade dispute lies questions about the safety of the drug. Elanco, the maker of ractopamine, sold under the name Paylean, conducted the studies considered before approval of the drug in 2000, and has reported “no averse effects were observed for any treatments.” However, within a few years of the drug’s approval, the FDA received hundreds of reports from farmers, veterinarians, and USDA inspectors of sickened pigs.

Now the issue remains at an impasse at the U.N.’s Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets global food-safety guidelines. The commission has sought to set a standard for residue levels of ractopamine in meat. With such standards in place, Washington would be in a position to challenge countries with bans on ractopamine at the World Trade Organization. China and the E.U. are the main countries blocking the residue limit at Codex. In China, organ meats, which contain the highest traces of the drug, are popular fare, and in the E.U. officials do not want to risk public outcry by importing meat raised with growth-promoting drugs, which are illegal there.

Bottemiller reported this story in conjunction with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, the first and only independent, non-profit news organization that produces investigative journalism in the critically underreported areas of food, agriculture, and environmental health. This is the second story of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, previous stories can be found here. [Full disclosure: I am the Managing Editor of that venture.]

You can read the full report here at MSNBC.com. You can also find additional reporting here on testing of ractopamine as well as more details about the process underway at Codex here on the Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Web site.

The cephalosporin class of drugs is used to treat a variety of serious conditions, including skin infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, abdominal infections, bone infections, pelvic inflammatory disease and meningitis.

Of all drugs prescribed to outpatients, 14 percent are from the cephalosporin class.

“Newer cephalosporins are used in the hospital setting to treat seriously ill patients with life-threatening disease,” according to FDA.

Mounting scientific evidence has shown that the overuse of cephalosporin in food animals is contributing to the development of drug-resistant strains of these bacteria.

“If cephalosporins are not effective in treating these diseases,” said FDA in a statement Wednesday, “doctors may have to use drugs that are not as effective or that have greater side effects.”

Two food borne illnesses–Salmonella and Shigella infections–are commonly treated with these drugs. It is via these bacteria that cephalosporin resistance is thought to be transmitted from animals to humans.

“It is likely that the extralabel use of cephalosporins in certain food-producing animal species is contributing to the emergence of cephalosporin-resistant zoonotic foodborne bacteria,” reads the FDA rule.

Properties of resistance can then be transmitted from one bacteria to another.

“What the science is telling us is that these bacteria all communicate and share information with each other and they pass along these resistance genes, and that’s a really troubling thing,” said Laura Rogers of Pew Charitable Trusts, a public policy watchdog. Rogers is project director for the organization’s Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

And once bacteria develop resistance to one type of cephalosporin, they can become resistant to others.

“Resistance to certain cephalosporins is of particular public health concern in light of the evidence of cross-resistance among drugs in the cephalosporin class,” FDA explains in its rule.

The agency is not forbidding the use of these drugs in animals outright, but is eliminating “extra-label” or “off-label” use, unapproved uses that may contribute to antibiotic resistance.

The newly prohibited uses include:

However, cephalosporins will still be permitted for use in the following scenarios:

These exceptions to the prohibition of extra-label uses are new to FDA’s proposed rule on cephalosporins. The agency issued an earlier version of this rule in June of 2008, but withdrew it after it met with criticism because it outlawed uses of the drug that did not lead to antimicrobial resistance.

FDA’s new order, scheduled to go into effect in April, follows a notice published in the Federal Register just before the holidays that indicated the agency was backing away from a 1977 announcement that it had decided not to withdraw penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed.

The agency said it was planning to “focus its efforts for now on the potential for voluntary reform and the promotion of the judicious use of antimicrobials in the interest of public health.”

In November, to the dismay of consumer and sustainable agriculture advocates, the FDA rejected two petitions to ban certain antibiotics from being used in food animal production. It said it was “currently pursuing other alternatives to address the issue of antimicrobial resistance related to the production use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture.”

But in announcing the new order Wednesday, Dr. Michael Taylor, the FDA’s commissioner of foods, said, “We believe this is an imperative step in preserving the effectiveness of this class of important antimicrobials that takes into account the need to protect the health of both humans and animals.”

The Pew Campaign praised FDA’s latest announcement, saying it targets cephalosporin use where it is most abused.

“I think this is acknowledging that there have been some misuses of the drug,” said Gale Hansen, senior officer of Pew’s Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

Each year, 9 billion broiler eggs are processed in America, and the majority of them are injected with cephalosporins. The drug is also widely administered to cattle for disease prevention. These pratices will be banned under the new rule.

However, other consumer advocates pointed out that cephalosporins make up only a small percent of all antibiotics administered to livestock for purposes such as boosting growth.

In fact, cephalosporins account for .2 percent of antibiotics administered to animals domestically each year.

Consumer groups criticized FDA for not including in its restriction other drugs that have also been shown to promote antimicrobial resistance.

“It’s high time that the FDA wakes up to the dangers of non-therapeutic uses that all antibiotics pose to our health and the safety of our food supply,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, in a statement Wednesday.

But despite cephalosporin’s small share of the animal antibiotic pie, Rogers points out that the drug has large implications for human health.

“Cephalosporins may not be used as extensively as some other drugs, but these drugs are critically important to human health, and so we need to protect them and use them as judiciously as possible,” she said.

Other consumer advocates agree that these restrictions are indeed necessary, but say they have been too long in coming.

“The order prohibiting certain uses of cephalosporin in many food-producing animals is clearly warranted, though it may be too little, and it is definitely too late,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, Food Safety Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in a statement Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY, a microbiologist who has sponsored bills aimed at preserving antibiotics’ effectiveness for treating human disease, was even more critical of the FDA’s new order.

In a statement she said the rule addresses “just the tip of the iceberg” and noted that the announcement comes three years after the FDA determined that extra-label use in food animal production posed a public health threat.

“This is a modest first step by FDA,” she wrote. “We don’t have time for the FDA to ploddingly take half-measures. We are staring at a massive public health threat in the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. We need to start acting with the swiftness and decisiveness this problem deserves.”

CSPI pointed out that at least five foodborne outbreaks since 2001 have been linked to cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella. These outbreaks resulted in more than 200 illnesses and one death.

FDA noted in its question and answer document on the rule that restrictions have already been placed on 14 other drugs thought to contribute to antimicrobial resistance, and that the agency continues to promote the “judicious use” of animal antibiotics, as evidenced by its Draft Guidelines on animal antibiotic use issued in 2010.

“This action is among a number of ongoing FDA activities and initiatives intended to address concerns about the use of antimicrobial drugs in animal agriculture,” says the agency’s Q&A page.

A 60-day comment period on the new rule will run from Jan. 6 to March 6. The FDA said it will take those comments into consideration before the new order goes into effect April 5.

Originally published on Food Safety News

This is a sorry end to a process that began in 1977 (!), but McKenna created an excellent timeline that traces the history of the issue back to the 1950s. In 2009, the Obama administration breathed new life into a moribund process because the top two Obama appointees at the FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her then-deputy Joshua Sharfstein, strongly supported restricting antibiotic use in agriculture.

But despite Hamburg and Sharfstein’s many supportive statements, the FDA has only produced a draft set of “voluntary” guidelines. And, with this latest announcement, it looks like that’s as far as they’re willing to go.

Inaction has consequences: According to the vast majority of microbiologists and public health experts, restrictions on agricultural uses are key to preserving the effectiveness of antibiotics as well as to preventing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA and salmonella Heidelberg (cause of last summer’s record-breaking ground turkey recall). And it’s no small dosage: Every year 29 million pounds of antibiotics are given to animals — often via their feed. That figure represents 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S.

Consumer groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Pew Charitable Trusts have been calling for an end to the practice for years. But it’s not just outsiders who are fed up with the agency’s work on this issue; the administration’s own watchdog group, the Government Accountability Office, recently gave the agency a failing grade in the subject.

In many ways, this issue parallels the ongoing battle over BPA, the endocrine-disrupting chemical used in food packaging, plastics, and register receipts. When finally pushed to ban the chemical, the FDA declared that “its hands were tied” by regulatory hurdles and jurisdictional questions. Yet soon after, the industry lobbying group American Chemical Council responded to consumer anger and petitioned the agency to go ahead and ban BPA. Only then did the FDA indicate it would follow through.

In other words, the FDA is admitting that as long as the industry opposes it, the agency can’t keep antibiotics out of our meat and dairy products (nor, for that matter, can it ensure that antibiotics will remain effective). It’s also admitting it has no real power over the industries it regulates. If the agency continues to favor industry’s concerns over the public health, it begs the question: Who exactly is looking out for us?

On the brighter side, several organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Public Citizen have actually filed a lawsuit against the FDA demanding the agency restrict antibiotics in animals. This is promising, because courts have shown more interest in defending science than the federal agencies (see this example from last year regarding rBST/rBGH in milk).

So it may just fall to a federal judge to determine what’s truly good for the public interest. Of course, it would be nice if the agency actually tasked with that responsibility would step up to the plate. But I guess that’s just too much to ask.

Originally published on Grist

On Monday afternoon a coalition of 11 food safety, environmental, consumer and fisheries organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) calling for a halt to its approval of a genetically engineered (GE) salmon after learning that the company’s–AquaBounty Technologies, Inc.–research site was contaminated with a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), the deadly fish flu that is devastating fish stocks around the world.

“This new information calls into question the reliability of AquaBounty’s data and the validity of its claims that their fish are safe for the environment” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The FDA must respond appropriately and conduct their own environmental impact statement that looks at a broad range of environmental risks from these genetically engineered salmon, including the risk of spreading diseases such as ISA and antibiotic use for other diseases.”

AquaBounty has claimed that the company’s process for raising GE fish is safer than traditional aquaculture.  However, documents that were revealed last week indicate that their production site was found by Canadian Authorities to have been contaminated in Nov. 2009.  This information was hidden from the public and potentially FDA and other Federal agencies consulting on the GE salmon application. ISA is a deadly disease and is classified as a ‘Listed’ disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)–alongside diseases such as Anthrax, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Foot and mouth disease, rabies, sheep pox, swine fever, avian influenza, West Nile fever, scrapie, fowl cholera, bovine tuberculosis and myxomatosis.

“Infectious Salmon Anaemia threatens wild fisheries around the world and the communities whose livelihood depend on those fish” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth US. “ISA infections in Chile cost the industry around two billion dollars. A similar infection in Canada and the U.S. could be the last blow to wild Atlantic salmon populations and bring a collapse in wild salmon fisheries.”

The December 19 letter urged FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to release all health data on AquaBounty’s GE salmon and to suspend any approval actions until all the data is disclosed and the public has an opportunity to review the data. Additionally, the coalition asked the FDA to conduct a full environmental impact statement that includes review of the effect of fish diseases, like ISA, on wild fish populations that might come into contact with the AquaBounty fish. Currently, the FDA has only performed a less comprehensive environmental risk assessment.

This news comes on the heels of a Senate subcommittee hearing held last Thursday on the environmental risks of GE fish, the first hearing of its kind in Congress.

Originally published on the Center for Food Safety’s blog

Today, a broadbased coalition of nearly 400 businesses and organizations dedicated to food safety and consumer rights called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods, to give consumers the right to know what is in our food. The Just Label It – We Have a Right to Know campaign submitted a petition on behalf of millions of consumers to the FDA calling for the mandatory labeling of GE foods, also referred to as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. These are foods that are altered at the molecular level in ways that could not happen naturally.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires the FDA to prevent consumer deception by clarifying that a food label is misleading if it omits significant, “material” information.  In 1992 however, the FDA issued a policy statement that defined “material” by the ability to be sensed by taste, smell, or other senses.  The FDA determined that GE Foods were “substantially equivalent” to conventionally produced foods, so there was no material difference and no labeling was required.  After almost 20 years, this policy is still in effect today.

For example, the FDA is currently deciding whether to deregulate GE salmon and make it commercially available. According to FDA, a salmon that is genetically engineered is not materially different from a non-GE salmon because it does not taste, smell or feel different. Without a label to tell us differently, when eating GE salmon, the public will not know if what they are consuming has been genetically altered.

“We are asking the FDA to change a decade’s old and out of touch policy,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety and lead author of the petition. “Today’s consumers are more informed than ever, and they have a right to know about the foods they are purchasing and consuming. We want the FDA to require labeling on foods intentionally produced using genetic engineering.”

“Polls show that consumers demand transparency in the foods they buy and overwhelmingly support labeling of GE food,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union, the public policy division of Consumer Reports. “In order to make informed decisions, the public deserves a truthful marketplace.”

Ninety-five percent of consumers believe GE foods should be labeled according to a poll [PDF] conducted by Consumers Union and 93 percent of the American public want the federal government to require mandatory labeling of GE foods. Labeling is required in other countries, including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Brazil, and China.

While nearly 90 percent of corn; 94 percent of soy; and 90 percent of cottonseed grown in the US are from GE seeds, the safety of GE crops for human consumption has not been adequately assured [PDF]. Several National Academy of Sciences studies have affirmed that GE crops have the potential to introduce new toxins or allergens into our food and environment.

Yet, unlike the strict safety evaluations for approval of new drugs, there are no mandatory human clinical trials of GE crops, no tests for carcinogenicity or harm to fetuses, no long term testing for human health risks, no requirement for long-term testing on animals, and limited testing for allergenicity, with some studies raising concerns that GE foods may pose an allergen risk.

“Scientists and consumers alike have many reasons for being concerned about the long-term health and environmental consequences of genetically engineered foods,” said Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a member of the coalition. “And the scientific debate about the benefits and risks of these crops will continue for a long time. Meanwhile an entire generation will have grown up consuming them.”

The best option to avoid GE foods is to buy USDA certified organic as the organic standards prohibit the use of GE ingredients; to look for Non-GMO Project Verified Non-GMO products; and to buy unprocessed foods such as fruits, vegetables, and avoid packaged food, much of which contains GE ingredients.

The campaign Web site, www.justlabelit.org, allows consumers an easy, one-click method to notify the FDA of their support for the petition and stay up to date on the initiative. It also offers education tools to get informed about GE foods, the benefits of labeling foods and ways to stay engaged through blogs, and social media. The campaign also launched a video that conveys the point of the initiative: Without labeling, families are being kept in the dark.

The idea is that it makes them grow faster — fast growth being the supreme goal of factory animal farming — and helps control a common intestinal disease called coccidiosis.The industry emphasizes that the arsenic is applied in organic form, which isn’t immediately toxic. “Organic” in the chemistry sense, that is, not the agricultural sense — i.e., molecules containing carbon atoms as well as arsenic. Trouble is, arsenic shifts from organic to inorganic rather easily. Indeed, “arsenic in poultry manure is rapidly converted into an inorganic form that is highly water soluble and capable of moving into surface and ground water,” write Keeve E. Nachman and Robert S. Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

Inorganic arsenic is the highly poisonous stuff — see the absurd and wonderful Cary Grant classic Arsenic and Old Lace, or the EPA’s less whimsical take here and here [PDF]. The fact that the organic arsenic added to feed turns inorganic when it makes its way into manure is chilling, given the mountains of concentrated waste generated by factory poultry farms.

One way farmers add arsenic to chicken feed is through drugs such as Pfizer’s Roxarsone. And the industry has (as with most of its worst practices) strenuously defended the use of such additives. While the USDA has by and large ignored the risks (mostly in the form of an unwillingness to look for arsenic in chicken), finally–astonishingly–the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acted.

According to the Associated Press, the FDA has confirmed that chickens given the drug (frequently those destined for the low-cost supermarket shelf) do indeed test positive for inorganic arsenic–just as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found [PDF] back in 2006. Despite this earlier evidence, the industry had continued to steadfastly maintain that the arsenic could not and did not make it into the meat.

As part of its announcement, the FDA said the arsenic levels are low and represent no meaningful risk to those eating Roxarsone-treated chicken–a point predictably emphasized by the National Chicken Council.

Tellingly, Pfizer announced that it would withdraw Roxarsone from the market starting next month. The FDA didn’t order Pfizer to withdraw the drug–the company did so voluntarily.

Of course, this does not solve the problem of arsenic in chicken. As Michael Hansen of Consumers Union observed in a press release, “There are several other arsenic-containing drugs for animals that are on the market, and those should also be withdrawn or banned, as they have been in the European Union.”

As Food & Water Watch reported in March, “between 2000 and 2008, the USDA tested only one out of every 12 million domestically produced chickens.” So it’s not as if the government is tracking this problem in any systematic way.

It boggles my mind that the industry is so willing to risk consumer panic over this issue and wait for the media or government officials to force its hand. Instead of making smart business decisions and ending dangerous practices that might give consumers cause to avoid their product, they instead try to hold back the tide. One drug gets withdrawn while others remain. The FDA tests 100 chickens (as they did in this latest test), while millions are produced and sold every year.

It’s no wonder that the so-called “ag-gag” bills remain popular among industrial farmers and their political lackeys. They can’t seem to let go of consumer ignorance as a key business strategy. With arsenic in chicken, the FDA, the USDA, and the chicken industry seem to care far more about the perception of having acted rather than the reality of ensuring all chicken sold in the U.S. is free from this toxic substance.

Originally published on Grist

Many Americans, including a high number living in low-income communities, have come to rely on canned tomato sauces, soups, and vegetables to expedite their meal preparations. Yet a new study from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reveals that the canned food items on your dinner plate are over 90 percent likely to be tainted with Bisphenol-A (BPA), a primary chemical used in the lining of cans. (For more information on BPA, check out Civil Eats’ previous reporting here, here, here, and here.)

These findings are notable because they underline the fact that BPA levels in cans are variable depending on the type of food, or even within batches of the same food item. This is the FDA’s largest study to date across a wide spectrum of commonly consumed canned food items, including soups, chilis, pasta and pork and beans–foods often consumed by children, who have a heightened risk of exposure due to their body size.

This is not the first time such findings have been made public. Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, found similar results (though at three times lower levels than the FDA findings) in a 2009 study, noting that the daily safety threshold set by the FDA of 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight was based on outdated studies often funded by the American Plastics Council, an industry group.

Consumers Union went on to suggest limiting daily exposure to one-thousandth of that level. “Consumers have no idea how much BPA they may be exposed to from any given can,” said Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Director of Technical Policy at Consumers Union. “As we previously reported, just a few servings of some of these foods can expose consumers to levels of BPA that have caused harm in animal studies. We believe this is an unacceptable margin of safety and that consumers should not have to ingest BPA.”

The scientists from the FDA did not go on to interpret the data in this new study or make any new recommendations about the agency’s safety threshold for the chemical.

Our chemical body burden

The Centers for Disease Control has demonstrated that 93 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPA in their urine. Other studies have concluded that BPA is a “gender-bending” chemical that messes with our hormones, as well as increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and hyperactivity in children. In addition, studies have found that it lowers sperm count in workers at the facilities where BPA is in use.

Chemicals enter our food system in many ways, including being used as additives in our food to change its flavor or color, moving into the food from its packaging, and through the use of pesticides on farm fields. In fact there are 80,000 different types of chemicals in use today, seven percent of which have been tested for safety by our government.

BPA is one of the more ubiquitous chemicals, found on cash register receipts, in dental fillings, and in certain types of plastics, in addition to aluminum cans. Given its ability to migrate, each of us is being exposed by various sources on a daily basis, and how this kind of multiple-point exposure adds up has yet to be studied.

Getting it out of our system

Eating a diet of whole foods is one of the best ways to clear BPA and other chemicals out of our system. But not everyone has access to these foods, and just handling the receipt on your next shopping trip can expose you (and not to mention the cashier).

In the U.S., chemicals must be proven to cause harm before they are removed from the market. Yet often exposure adds up over time, which could be resulting in chronic conditions that are difficult to quantify, making it particularly hard to ban a chemical. Advocates believe that stronger public policy is necessary to lower the risk and eliminate unwanted exposure to the chemical.

While Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) championed legislation to ban BPA altogether in the Senate last year, there has yet to be a bill that passes either the House or Senate on this issue. Meanwhile, BPA in children’s products has been banned in nine states, including Maine, Minnesota and Connecticut, as well as in the European Union, Canada and most recently, China is moving to ban the chemical. Similar BPA-ban legislation is pending in 12 other states, including California, which passed legislation in the State Senate on Monday.

Some companies are responding to the public’s concern over BPA by preemptively removing it from their baby bottles and other products. The grocery chain Kroger recently announced it would be removing BPA from the store’s brand of canned food items as well as cash register receipts. But as a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times reminded us, as companies react to public outcry by changing their formulas, they might be replacing it with similarly harmful chemicals without as much name recognition.

The fact that such a study was conducted by the FDA serves as part of a shifting strategy for the agency on BPA. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2009, lobbyists for the chemical industry have historically played an active role in FDA policy making and managing public opinion of the chemical. Yet last year, the agency admitted that the chemical was not entirely safe in food contact applications, and that it supports stronger regulations and oversight.

In 2008, the agency drafted an updated assessment of the chemical which included some concern over its safety. A subcommittee reviewed the draft and refuted these findings. Two and a half years later, this internal disagreement has left a finalized assessment to gather dust on a desk somewhere at the FDA. Meanwhile, the general public continues to be exposed to a soup of chemicals, including BPA, in variable and uncontrolled doses.

As with genetically modified foods and now, antibiotics, perhaps there will soon be a lawsuit filed against the FDA to force it to better regulate BPA and the chemicals in line to replace it.

Photo: stevendepolo via Flickr