Safe food isn't a controversial issue, right? President Obama supports the food safety bill -- even the Republicans support it. So why hasn't it passed? The holdup seems to be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she'll offer an amendment banning bisphenol-A, the nasty little chemical and known endocrine disruptor found in virtually all food and beverage containers -- which upsets the companies who make the stuff. The container industry is a huge one, and banning the substance so widely used could have major economic effects at a time when we're barely holding on. Hopefully they'll come up with an effective compromise with Feinstein:

A year after House Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly approved legislation to improve food safety, public health advocates are growing frustrated that the Senate has yet to take up the bill.

A coalition of food safety groups tried to turn up the pressure last week on Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), running newspaper ads in the lawmakers' two states featuring constituents who fell seriously ill from food poisoning. The ads urged Reid and McConnell to move the bill to the Senate floor and pass it.

"Time is short -- there are not a lot of legislative days on the calendar and we're seeing [food] recalls every week," said Erik Olson with the food and consumer product safety programs at Pew Health Group. "There is obviously a lot of interest in making sure folks know this bill has broad public support and that there is really no reason not to move this. It would show that Washington can get something done."

[...] The bill, which would be the first major change to food safety laws in 70 years, is designed to give the Food and Drug Administration vast new regulatory authority over food production. It places greater responsibility on manufacturers and farmers to produce food free from contamination -- a departure from the country's reactive tradition, which has relied on government inspectors to catch tainted food after the fact.

The legislation follows a wave of food-borne illnesses over the past four years, involving products as varied as spinach and cookie dough, which has shaken consumer confidence and made the issue a priority for many lawmakers and the White House. Food illnesses affect one in four Americans and kill 5,000 each year, according to government statistics. Tainted food has cost the food industry billions of dollars in recalls, lost sales and legal expenses.

The measure also would give the FDA authority to order a recall if it suspects contamination -- authority it does not currently have. It would allow the FDA to quarantine a geographic area, blocking the distribution of suspect food to the rest of the country. And the agency would gain access to records at farms and food production facilities.

(Steps to becoming a Locivore--A video by Chelsea Hernandez, who is not affiliated with GastroNomalies.com)

Guestblogged by Ali Savino

I know many of us here consider ourselves to be part of the progressive movement. And for those of us who have been around for a while, we remember how lonely and uncertain it was. There was nothing but uphill battles to be fought against political Goliaths who had industry and riches behind them. And there was no way a rag tag bunch of outsiders armed with nothing but a little online savvy and a lot of righteous outrage was going to take on the system. But we proved everyone wrong, and while the fight is not over (Universal Healthcare) and there is still work to be done (public financing), no one can say that the progressive movement isn't a force to be reckoned with.

Now there are some new kids in town. Like the progressive movement, they have huge, fearsome opponents with an endless supply of funds. Like the early years of the progressive movement, no one is taking these new comers seriously yet. Like the progressive movement they are up against unbelievable odds. Yet their cause is true and right and they cannot fail.

They are the food movement.

The food movement encompasses an extensive battlefield covering everything from energy independence to salmonella outbreaks to equitable trade policies to caring for the neediest among us here and abroad. Their opponent is Big Food, with more resources than Big Oil and lessons learned from Big Tobacco. They are masters of manipulation and keepers of Congress, and for decades they have run amok unchallenged. But the status quo is changing. Organics are no longer the realm of the DFHs. Americans are asking why there is recall after recall. Food prices sky rocketed last year. Obesity exploded in the last decade. There is something very, very wrong about what we eat and how we eat it.

As for me, I became interested in food policy after learning about soil depletion and how it is leaving our produce with fewer and fewer nutrients. That's right - even if you're eating your carrots and apples, you STILL may not be getting your daily allowance of vitamins. And the kick in the shins? Those dietary requirements are written by food lobbyists who are motivated only by their bottom line. So who really knows anymore? That's what the food movement is all about - giving people the access and information to start making food choices for themselves instead of Madison Avenue telling us all what to eat.

The food movement has some good starts. Books by people like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Mark Bittman are national best sellers. Movies like Supersize Me, Fast Food Nation, Food Inc and the upcoming Fresh are bringing the issues to the masses. Me? Along with several other fab food policy bloggers (check out my blogroll for some great suggestions) I’m doing my part to bring food policy into the realm of food consumers with GastroNomalies.com.

GastroNomalies isn’t for the wonks – it’s for the rest of us who are just trying to figure this food stuff out and have a lot of fun doing it. Because food is FUN and if it stops being fun, then what are we all doing this for?

The food movement shares many common values and several common goals with the progressive movement. The two are natural allies. So stop on by.

Ali Savino is the founder of www.GastroNomalies.com

This is what happens after eight years of starving government, I guess:

While much of the current debate about improving food safety has focused on federal agencies -- the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the bulk of food safety work is performed by about 3,000 local and state agencies, which handle everything from inspections of restaurants, food processing plants and grocery stores to detecting outbreaks and removing unsafe products from stores.

But those agencies are struggling, and Congress must reengineer the national system, according to an analysis by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, based on consultations with health experts, consumer groups and food executives nationwide.

"Congress needs to take responsibility for telling the government what its job is," said Michael R. Taylor, an author of the study who teaches at George Washington and is a former top official at the FDA and USDA. The study urges Congress to invest at least $350 million over five years to bolster underfunded state and local agencies and ensure a basic level of food safety in each state.

The analysis describes a fractured collection of food safety professionals all trying to do the same thing -- prevent illness from contaminated food -- but their efforts are hampered by weak coordination, poor communication, varying abilities, inconsistent methods and a lack of federal leadership. The report urges Congress to create a single cohesive food safety network composed of local, state and federal agencies and accountable to the secretary of health and human services.

"We need one food safety system, not 50," said Joseph Corby, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials. "State and local agencies do 2.5 million inspections a year, analyze hundreds of thousands of food samples, and most of this work is not done in a coordinated fashion and not used by the federal agencies."

Communication between state and local officials and federal agencies is often disjointed, the study found. During a recall of a tainted product, for example, the FDA will often obtain from a food processor a distribution list that identifies retailers who received the product, but the agency does not routinely share that information with local or state officials, even though they are responsible for checking store shelves to make sure tainted products have been removed.

Meanwhile, states that interview people who have become sick from food to figure out which products may be suspect often do not share victims' identities with the CDC, citing privacy laws, even if that data would help federal officials better track an outbreak.

It's going to take a while to rebuild the inspection structure for food safety:

After decades of steady progress, the safety of the nation’s food supply has not improved over the past three years, the government reported Thursday. And, it said, in the case of salmonella, the dangerous bacteria recently found in peanuts and pistachios, infections may be creeping upward.

The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, demonstrates that the nation’s food safety system, created when most foods were grown, prepared and consumed locally, needs a thorough overhaul to regulate an increasingly global food industry, top government health officials said Thursday.

“The system needs to be modernized to address the challenges and changes of the globalization of the food supply and rapid distribution chains,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. “F.D.A. needs to do more inspections.” Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the agency’s food center, agreed. “As supply chains get longer and longer,” Dr. Sundlof said, “there’s more opportunity to introduce contaminants that have a public health effect.”

The report is likely to deepen tensions between the F.D.A. and the Department of Agriculture, which have long been rivals in overseeing food safety. An Agriculture Department campaign begun in 2006 to reduce salmonella contamination of meat and poultry has been successful, the report noted. But Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the C.D.C.’s division of foodborne diseases, suggested that whatever progress the department had made in improving overall food safety might have been lost by the F.D.A.

Could I interest you in your local sustainability movement, where food is either grown in your own backyard - or purchased directly from the farmer who grew it? It's probably a lot safer.

Urban sustainability is one of the quickest-growing grassroots movements in the nation. In my Philadelphia neighborhood, I can eat in dozens of local restaurants who only buy from local food producers and suppliers. (Buy Fresh, Buy Local is a popular local bumper sticker.) I buy produce from an urban farm that was constructed on a reclaimed brownfield site (the stuff is grown hydroponically, so no nasty toxins from the soil - and no GMO seed! I get my garden seedlings from the same place. Homegrown is best!) And let's not forget: the sooner you get the produce once it's removed from the soil, the more nutrients it has.

Plus, local food just tastes better. Try chopping up a juicy, fresh tomato and sauteing it in olive oil with salt, pepper, cinnamon and a pinch of sugar. Serve over pasta and you'll have something with which no jar sauce can compare. Yum!

DOWNLOAD (235)

PLAY (193)

See that nice fellow up there refusing to answer any questions about why his company kept selling salmonella-tainted products even after it knew it was making them?

Doesn't it somehow figure that he was a Bush administration appointee to the USDA panel charged with overseeing the quality and safety of peanut products?

The president of the peanut company linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak serves on an industry advisory board that helps the U.S. Department of Agriculture set quality standards for peanuts.

Stewart Parnell, president of Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va., was first appointed to the USDA’s Peanut Standards Board in July 2005 and was reappointed in October for a second term that runs until June 2011, according to the USDA.

Conservative governance in action, folks.

Parnell was removed from the board last week.

More about the Peanut Standards Board here.

Well, now we know the company responsible for distributing the tainted wheat gluten, however there are some big questions that still remain. If you look at the timeline, it looks like the FDA knew that the gluten was tainted and sat on that information for three weeks. The FDA was notified by Menu Foods on March 8th, but did not issue their recall until March 30th. How many pets died because that information hadn't been released? And given how slow they've reacted, how can we be sure that the gluten has not made it into human food?

David Goldstein:

To the thousands of Americans whose dogs and cats have already been sickened or killed, and the many millions more who rightfully fear for the health of their beloved pets, the recent massive pet food recall already represents a disastrous failure of our food safety systems. But if it eventually turns out that toxic wheat gluten made its way into the human food supply, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) tentative response and equivocating public statements might have set the stage for a collapse of confidence of post-Katrina proportions.

In finally identifying itself today, the U.S. importer of the melamine-tainted wheat gluten - the unappetizingly named ChemNutra - revealed new information that is sure to anger aggrieved pet owners: Menu Foods knew their product was causing problems as early as March 8, a full week before the first recall was made public. And while ChemNutra insists that none of its 792 metric tons of contaminated wheat gluten shipped to facilities that manufacture food for human consumption, one can forgive suspicious consumers for not accepting the suddenly talkative company at its word, especially considering that this assurance directly contradicts an FDA report from earlier today. For whatever the true risk to our food supply, the corporate and regulatory response is shaping up to be a textbook example of failed crisis management.

Continue reading »