Pathetic Gesture in FDA Legistlation Puts People Last

The House passed a very weak and pathetic food safety bill. It was supposed to help the FDA get some teeth, resources and authority after the beef, spinach, pepper and peanut calamities of the last 2 years. It was supposed to help prevent food borne illness from spreading. Food borne illness that killed kids and seniors in the case of the peanut paste recall. We should be trumpeting this, except...

WASHINGTON -- The House passed legislation to give the Food and Drug Administration more authority and resources to prevent food-borne illnesses after a string of outbreaks involving peanuts, spinach, hot peppers and other foods.

The 283-142 vote came after lawmakers from rural districts won concessions that would exempt farms from paying a registration fee, curb the FDA's access to farm records and limit its ability to set production standards to only the foods most likely to be contaminated.

The legislation also exempts farms and food facilities regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Senate isn't expected to act on similar legislation until later this year.

So let me get this straight, the FDA can't...
inspect farms
inspect farm records
and is limited in setting any production standards for farms and food facilities
and can only inspect foods and facilities that are most likely to be bad? And who determines that?

Meanwhile big industrial food companies grow and grow, factory farms are free to keep up their unhealthy practices. Be ready for a new recall or scandal soon ladies and gents. This bill will do very little to change anything, and the system as it stands in unsustainable.

cross posted from FL

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Poison Peanut Round Up

I've been following the PCA Recall of Peanut Paste etc. with great interest (and shock and horror.) The story gets worse at every turn. There are now some 500+ people who have gotten sick, at least 8 have died. And the recall will be the largest in American history.

We are looking at some 30 Million lbs of product so far.

and in the latest round up of reporting on the issue...

Products sent to our troops being recalled to the tune of 50,000 meals.

It turns out that the FDA waited on announcing the recall until the company responsible, Peanut Corp of America, cleared the wording of the announcement?!? That's right, we had to ask the criminals first before we could take care of getting the tainted product off the shelves.

You can download an excel sheet or visit the FDA site for the HUGE and growing list of recalled products. In case you haven't checked your cupboards yet, do so asap-- and remember they have pushed the date of the beginning of the recall back to products from 2 years ago till now.

In addition to the salmonella issue it appears that PCA had products rejected by Canada for containing METAL in their peanut paste.

Grandparents and children Half of the folks that got sick are under the age of 10 and all of the people who have died from the salmonella laden products are over the age of 59.

The FDA has to be better funded and better run. New news is breaking that Parnell, the CEO of Peanut Corp was actually given the job of heading the Peanut Board at the FDA. Insane.

PCA has a second plant that was never even licensed, but has been operating for decades.

The AP has video of this plant, and quotes from President Obama on the need to revamp the FDA.

As I have said before and will continue to say-- it is long past time to take a good long look at the industrial food chain and what we have come to accept as the food business. It is long past time to turn to more local and sustainable solutions. It is long past time to go back to eating food and not food products.

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More Bad Beef

E.Coli Magnified Photo From HealthNews-Stat.com

Two more E. coli related beef recalls. The most serious effecting kids at a scout camp. The second is a recall of beef sold in June in Whole Foods stores. People have gotten sick on ground beef purchased from Whole foods in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

At least 73 people who attended the popular camp at Goshen Scout Reservation in the Blue Ridge Mountains have reported falling ill, Virginia officials said. So far, the E. coli infection has been confirmed in one adult from Maryland and 21 children from Virginia. Eight were hospitalized.

The outbreak began between July 20 and July 26, and may have continued into the next week, health officials said.

The first week, 1,647 scouts, leaders and staff members attended the camp, with 1,310 participants the next week, according to the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Boy Scout officials closed the camp Sunday.

Since spring 2007, more than 19,500 tons of E. coli-tainted beef have been recalled in more than 30 separate incidents, according to Seattle attorney and food safety expert William D. Marler.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced Monday that it was investigating six cases of E. coli that might be linked to a multi-state outbreak involving tainted meat from Nebraska Beef of Omaha. So far, at least 50 people have been sickened.

"Nobody I've talked to has any idea why we're seeing an increase, though everybody has a different theory," Marler said. "The meat industry basically has no answers. It's pretty frustrating -- there'll be some hand-wringing, a bunch of lawsuits and nothing will be done until three months later, when it all happens again." -- Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

So when are we going to really investigate all these industrial food safety incidents? When are we going to crack down on corporate perpetrators of unsafe, unsanitary practices? This is the kind of thing that people just don't really get their heads around and yet this food is in our fridges, at our restaurants, at the summer camps where we send our kids.

I will say it again, there needs to be a MAJOR overhaul of our food system and our food safety monitoring institutions. The Marler quote above says that no one knows why this stuff is happening more frequently?!

WTF? Gut departments that are responsible for health and safety and then put incompetent people in the driver's seat for 8 years and you wonder why this is happening?! I know exactly why it is happening more often. What I want to know is what are we going to do about it?

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Salmonella Saintpaul Continues to Infect Americans; FDA and CDC Still with No Answers

More on the Tomato-Cilantro-Pepper Ban and Salmonella Saintpaul.

Since April, 1090 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 42 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.

Only 6 persons infected with this strain of Salmonella Saintpaul were identified in the country during April through June of 2007. The previous rarity of this strain and the distribution of illnesses in all U.S. regions suggest that the implicated food is distributed throughout much of the country. Because many persons with Salmonella illness do not have a stool specimen tested, it is likely that many more illnesses have occurred than those reported. Some of these unreported illnesses may be in states that are not on today’s map--from the CDC

Following this closely and I remain of the opinion that this kind of thing is going to become more common and more dangerous unless we look at our entire industrial food chain and make radical changes.

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Killer Tomatoes Update

As of this weekend-- Salmonella-tainted tomatoes have sickened more than 800 people in the food scandal that just keeps on giving.

As I have written before, the inadequacies of the FDA will have a long range impact. In addition to the people who get sick, (some fatally) when these big-ag outbreaks happen, the absolute inability of the inadequately funded and grossly mismanaged FDA to track down the actually culprits and causes, ultimately effects all growers and particularly medium sized ones - leading to more big ag, more mismanagement and more health & safety concerns. It is a vicious circle.

Growers urge salmonella hearings. Western Growers is urging the House Committee on Agriculture to quickly hold hearings on the salmonella outbreak associated with fresh, red round, roma and plum tomatoes. The industry group, whose membership includes produce growers in Monterey County, said federal food safety and health officials haven't been able to pinpoint the outbreak's source. As a result, tomato growers are suffering great harm, the group said Saturday.

"Congress must investigate this matter and determine ways to avoid this in the future and make the innocent tomato growers, packers and shippers whole," said Western Growers president Tom Nassif."- The Monterey County Herald

The big companies can write this kind of thing off, pass on the expense, push a different product. The Medium size growers, canners, packers and shippers will go out of business which leaves us with less choice, more mono-culture, higher risk of poor health and safety standards.

It will help small, local producers and that is the only good part of this story. Unfortunately small growers cannot grow enough to meet need and demand.

We need some real house-cleaning in the FDA and almost every other federal oversight-bureau. It is going to take years to root out all the corruption and insider “looking the other way,” that is the legacy of this administration.

In addition to making people sick, every major mistake like this will drive food prices higher. As with so many other Bush and Co. policies we are seeing the inevitable conclusions brought about by the GOP conservative, corporatist ideology.

Here are just some highlights of the who's who in regulatory jobs under Bush-Cheney Inc.

DAVID LAURISKI, chosen as the Labor Department’s Assistant Secretary of Mine Safety and Health, previously spent 30 years in the mining industry, during which time he advocated loosening of coal dust standards.

J. STEVEN GRILES, named Deputy Secretary of the Interior, was previously a lobbyist for major oil and mining companies and for the National Mining association.

JACQUELINE GLASSMAN, appointed chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, previously worked in the general counsel’s office of DaimlerChrysler, where among other things she helped defend against charges brought by California State officials that the company had recycled defective cars to consumers.

In the DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE (keepers of the tomato saftey responsibility along with the FDA)

Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael Torrey, had been a vice president at the International Dairy Foods Association.

Deputy Secretary James Moseley was a partner in Infinity Pork LLC, a factory farm in Indiana.

Under Secretary J.B. Penn had been an executive of Sparks Companies, an agribusiness consulting firm.

Under Secretary Joseph Jen had been director of research at Campbell Soup Company’s Campbell Institute of Research and Technology.

Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment Mark Rey, whose post involved oversight of the Forest Service, was previously a vice president of the American Forest and Paper Association.

Deputy Under Secretary Floyd D. Gaibler had been executive director of the National Cheese Institute and the American Butter Institute, which are funded by the dairy industry

Deputy Under Secretary Kate Coler had been director of government relations for the Food Marketing Institute.

Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations Mary Waters had been a senior director and legislative counsel for ConAgra Foods.

--all the above taken from http://www.revolvingdoor.info/

I am sure none of these fine people were influenced by their prior corporate positions and none of them would put American citizens at risk in order to create larger profit margins for their former bosses. I am feeling pretty safe, how about you?

*Update* from the thread (h/t ensley) there now seems to be some question if it even was the tomatoes which caused the outbreak. That's how poorly run the FDA really is.

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The Helsinki Syndrome, or "Ethics? We Don't Need No Steenking Ethics!"

According to Integrity in Science Watch, the United States Food and Drug Administration is changing the rules on clinical trials to allow drug companies to compare new medications with placebos instead of current standard treatment. The Bush Administration is siding with Big Pharma again.

It sounds like a small change, but it contravenes the 1989 Declaration of Helsinki, which established an international standard set of ethical guidelines for human experimentation. The declaration is not binding international law but is considered "a guiding statement of ethical principles for doctors involved in medical research".

The current text of the Declaration, as amended five times, says:

The benefits, risks, burdens and effectiveness of a new method should be tested against those of the best current prophylactic, diagnostic, and therapeutic methods. This does not exclude the use of placebo, or no treatment, in studies where no proven prophylactic, diagnostic or therapeutic method exists

At Embo, Howard Wolinsky explains:

This [FDA] decision, triggered by the 2000 update to the DoH, is the latest move in an increasingly heated debate over medical research ethics. The FDA is reacting in particular to the addition of two controversial paragraphs, which, if adopted in their own regulations, would limit the use of placebos in drug trials and increase the responsibilities of trial sponsors towards research participants.

The heart of the distinction / dispute comes back to an ancient precept commonly taught in medical school: primum non nocere, "first, do no harm". Not part of the Hippocratic Oath, it may be a Latin paraphrase of a Hippocratic aphorism. It may be from Epidemics, Bk 1, Sect V, "...to help, or at least to do no harm".

In order to "do no harm", medical researchers testing a new drug (for example) must compare the drug with the current standard of care (if any). Only if there is no current standard treatment can researchers compare an experimental new drug with a placebo. In other words, researchers cannot deny treatment to someone just because they've entered a drug trial.

The FDA wants to change that. The FDA wants to make it legal for medical researchers to deny treatment to research subjects. The FDA wants to make it legal for medical researchers to let people die instead of giving them the best current treatment.

How's that for a "culture of life"?

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