Section » Contaminated food
Meet your greens, part 3: Taking the stand against the veggilantes
This is the third in a series about the USDA hearings on an industry proposal for a food-safety marketing agreement for leafy green vegetables. My first post describes what marketing agreements are and do; my second covers the first
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Meet your greens, part 2: Industry seeks to outfox FDA
This is the second in a series of posts on my week in Monterey, CA, where I attended the first of seven USDA hearings around the country on an industry proposal to create a national
NY Senator Schumer calls for clamp down on sketchy milk protein concentrates
Putting the squeeze on MPCs: We missed this a few days ago, but New York Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced a bill that would levy higher tariffs on imports of milk protein concentrates, or MPCs. (Little
Memo to raw-milk advocates: Improve information, or get sued
Fifty veterinarians and others concerned with food safety gathered at a raw milk symposium last Sunday in Seattle. Sponsored by the American Veterinarian Medical Association (AVMA), “The Raw Milk Conundrum” featured speakers from nearly
Smithfield’s first union contract, at a Tar Heel plant, may pay unexpected dividends
Achoo, swine flu!!!: The newly unionized workforce at Smithfield Foods’ pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C., just signed its first labor contract, and the industry is watching closely to see if union fever spreads. This little sentence leapt out at us: "Under the pre-union system, an employee received demerit
Food safety sweep
House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman certainly had his ducks in a row today, as a sweeping food safety bill, H.R. 2749, passed unanimously out of the committee. (CQ Politics and Reuters;
Crying fowl about food-borne illnesses
Cluck it: Chicken is identified as the No. 1 ingredient source of food-borne illness (can you say CAFO? So why is an old-fashioned chicken coop pictured?). However, if you must know, two-thirds of food-related illnesses — note carefully worded following description — "traced to a lone ingredient"
Russia says ‘nyet’ to pork from two Tyson plants
Pork, please, but hold the E. coli. Russia reportedly has banned pork from two Iowa plants run by Tyson due to Russians' finding E. coli bacterium in pork from the plants. (Brownfield) SHARETHIS.addEntry({
Meat industry squeals at thought of FDA oversight
Leggo of our CAFO!: Big Meat is less than pleased with the food safety bill currently moving through Congress, summarizes Tom Laskawy. Despite the facts that food safety breaches — and voluntary, useless after-the-fact recalls — are still common, the industry thinks the proposed new fees are too
Processed food companies: Food safety is the consumer’s job
Perhaps the only time we'll agree with Michael Osterholm: Mega food companies like ConAgra, whose frozen chicken pot pies sickened over 15,000 people two years ago, are giving up the ghost and admitting they have no idea where many of their ingredients come from nor how they've been handled. Sound like
Wisconsin spinach recalled, DC protests
Safety in numbers: Kleen-Pak brand fresh spinach is being recalled in Wisconsin and Illinois after testing positive for salmonella. (Brownfield) Just one more incident to add to the call for food
Digest - Blogs, features and snacks: Pesticide perversions, subsidy love, the anti-Pollan
Small-town physician sees effects of Big Ag: an Indiana neonatologist finds that birth defects, including spina bifida, cleft pallet and lip, down syndrome, urogenital abnormalities, and club foot (among others) are more likely to occur in pregnancies that begin between April and July — the time period
Straight to the superbug supersource: Q&A with Maryn McKenna about MRSA in people — and pigs
Everyone's up in arms about historian James McWilliams' New York Times op-ed last week, misleadingly headlined "Free-Range Trichinosis," about how a study found more pathogens in pastured pigs than factory ones. Many bloggers have
Digest - News: Perilous pork, the First Lettuce, food safety plateaus
Free-range throwdown: A New York Times op-ed turns the food-fear spotlight on pastured pork, covering a study that finds that "free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites" including potentially-deadly Trichinosis. The author gets in a few more digs with
Digest - Features and blogs: Free-range response, literary seasonality, the Hamburg wish list
Fighting the Averyian Flu: Researchers at Johns Hopkins University look a little deeper at the NYT pork op-ed and find that the study mentioned was funded by the National Pork Board, which represents conventional producers, and that the Trichinosis "positive" pigs tested seropositive, meaning they have
