food safety

Playing Chicken With Food Safety

Food safety doesn’t get the attention it deserves from regulators. Case in point: the latest Salmonella outbreak.

Food safety is something of a step-child of U.S. regulation.  The public obviously cares about it, but it lacks the kind of attention from advocacy groups that the environment gets.  The results have not been pretty. Food safety is divided between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (for …

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Protecting the Safety of Food Imports

Food safety, particularly for imported foods, is a serious problems.  Help is on the way — but slowly, very slowly. According to the NY Times: About 15 percent of food that Americans eat comes from abroad, more than double what it was just 10 years ago, including nearly two-thirds of fresh fruits and vegetables. And …

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The House GOP Takes a Courageous Stand Against Food Safety

It takes guts to oppose food safety.  But that’s no problem for the House GOP.  According to the NY TImes, today’s House farm bill wasn’t content to eliminate food stamps, it also took aim at food safety: One overlooked provision in the bill came from Representative Dan Benishek, Republican of Michigan, a surgeon, and would …

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Genetically Modified Foods & California’s Proposition 37: What’s All the Fuss About?

Largely lost in the shuffle of the current presidential election campaign and several more heavily-publicized state ballot measures, California’s Secretary of State recently announced that the “California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act” has qualified for the state’s November 2012 election ballot, where it will appear as Proposition 37. (The text of Proposition 37 …

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A Beet Generation

On Friday, a federal judge revoked USDA’s approval of Roundup-ready sugar beets.  Sugar beets are planted on ten million acres in ten states.  The order was based on USDA’s failure to perform an environmental impact statement prior to the approval.  Given that USDA’s raison d’etre is promoting agribusiness, it’s not surprising that environmental concerns are …

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