Food Law Prof Blog

Serving Facts Labeling on alcohol beverages

Bevlog (all about beer and wine labels) has a post with pictures about serving facts labeling for alcohol beverages.  Since Bevlog has great label pictures, it's worth seeing!

FDA Cider, Apples and Nutrition Facts

EPA Considering Action on Nano particles as pesticides

From the International Center for Technology Assessment:

Washington, DC (November 19, 2008)-  Acknowledging the critical need for in-depth review of products utilizing nanotechnology pesticides, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opened a 60-day public comment period in response to a petition filed by the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) which demands the agency stop the sale of numerous consumer products with nano-silver.

In the Federal Registry notice released today, EPA determined that ICTA’s petition “raises serious issues that potentially affect private and public sector stakeholders” and is instituting a 60-day period for public comment. EPA will review the petition and any comments received “before deciding how best to respond to the petition.”

ICTA filed a legal petition in May 2008 challenging EPA’s failure to regulate nanomaterials in pesticides. The 100-page petition addresses the serious human health concerns raised by these unique substances, as well as their potential to be highly destructive to natural environments, and calls on the EPA to fully analyze the health and environmental impacts of nanotechnology, regulate nano products as new pesticides, and require labeling of all products. 

“It’s unfortunate that it has taken seven months, but the agency has taken the first step towards potential regulation of these products and protection of the environment,” said George Kimbrell, ICTA staff attorney. “We are confident the agency will do the right thing and properly classify these products as pesticides.”

Nanotechnology is a powerful new platform technology for taking apart and reconstructing nature at the atomic and molecular level. The same size and chemical characteristics that give manufactured nanoparticles unique properties—tiny size, vastly increased surface area to volume ratio, high reactivity—can also create unique and unpredictable human health and environmental risks.

Increasingly, manufacturers are infusing many and diverse consumer products with nanoparticle silver (nano-silver) for its enhanced “germ killing” abilities.  Nano-silver is now the most common commercialized nanomaterial. There are more than 260 nano-silver products currently on the market, ranging from household appliances and cleaners to clothing, cutlery, and children’s toys to personal care products and electronics.

“Nano-silver is an unknown threat not only to the environment but also to human health,” Kimbrell said. “The public has no idea that consumer products contain potentially dangerous nanoparticles because no labeling is currently required.”

Silver is known to be toxic to fish, aquatic organisms and microorganisms and recent scientific studies have shown that nano-silver is much more toxic and can cause damage in new ways.  A 2008 study showed that washing nano-silver socks released substantial amounts of the nano-silver into the laundry discharge water, which will ultimately reach natural waterways and potentially poison fish and other aquatic organisms.  Another 2008 study found that releases of nano-silver destroy benign bacteria used in wastewater treatment.  The human health impacts of nano-silver are still largely unknown, but some studies and cases indicate that the nanomaterial has the potential to increase antibiotic resistance and potentially cause kidney and other internal problems.

Many of the nano-silver infused products are for children (baby bottles, toys, stuffed animals, and clothing) or otherwise create high human exposures (cutlery, food containers, paints, bedding and personal care products) despite little research on nano-silver’s potential human health impacts.  Studies have questioned whether traditional assumptions about silver’s safety are sufficient in light of the unique properties of nano-scale materials. 

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Comments must be received by EPA on or before January 18, 2009. Direct your comments to docket ID EPA-HQ-OPP-2008-0650. Submit comments online at http://www.regulations.gov, or by mail: Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) Regulatory Public Docket (7502P), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20460 

NOSB aquaculture recommendations

The National Organic Standards Board has just met to vote on recommendations for "organic" fish.  There are no organic standards for fish yet.  Here is a brief summary of the issues from Farmedsalmonexposed.org:

The NOSB will vote on their recommendations for "organic" fish production that would allow fish to carry the USDA organic label—despite being raised under conditions that fail to meet fundamental USDA organic principles. The NOSB recommendations allow:

• Fish to be fed food other than 100% organic feed—the gold standard that must be met by other USDA-certified organic livestock;
• Fishmeal used to feed farmed fish from wild fish—which has the potential to carry mercury and PCBs; and
• Open net cages to be used—which flush pollution, disease and parasites from open net fish farms directly into the ocean, adversely impacting wild fish supply, sustainability and the health of the oceans.

A recording of a press conference discussing the recommendations is available on the Farmed Salmon Exposed website:   press_call_11-14-08.mp3

The press call explains some of the controversial issues surrounding organic fish definitions, open net pen salmon farms and sea lice, and classification of fish as "livestock."

The NOSB Livestock Committee recommendations are available on the NOSB website.

Fish Feed recommendation

Net pen recommendation

Consumers Want Label Info -- Consumers Union Poll

From OMBwatch.org:

Public Wants More Info on Food Labels

A national poll shows strong consumer support for improved food labeling and more frequent inspections of food-processing facilities. According to food safety advocates, Americans want labels that identify use of genetically engineered or cloned ingredients, as well as expanded country-of-origin labeling. . . .

more

USDA Publication: Household Food Security in the United States, 2007

A report on household food security is available on the website of the USDA Economic Research Service:

Household Food Security in the United States, 2007, By Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson

Eighty-nine percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2007, meaning that they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (11.1 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year. About one-third of food insecure households (4.1 percent of all U.S. households) had very low food security—meaning that the food intake of one or more adults was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food. Prevalence rates of food insecurity and very low food security were essentially unchanged from those in 2005 and 2006.

Thanks go to Mary Ann Archer (Warren E. Burger Library, William Mitchell College of Law) for this post. 

Study: corn present in most fast food

Found this one on Wired Science:

"That the $100-billion fast food industry rests on a foundation of corn has been known more through inference and observation than hard scientific fact — until now.

Chemical analysis from restaurants across the United States shows that nearly every cow or chicken used in fast food is raised on a diet of corn, prompting fresh criticism of the government's role in subsidizing poor eating habits. "

Here's an abstract for the study that provided the chemical analysis:

Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in fast food: Signatures of corn and confinement,
A. Hope Jahren and Rebecca A. Kraft

Americans spend >100 billion dollars on restaurant fast food each year; fast food meals comprise a disproportionate amount of both meat and calories within the U.S. diet. We used carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to infer the source of feed to meat animals, the source of fat within fries, and the extent of fertilization and confinement inherent to production. We sampled food from McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's chains, purchasing >480 servings of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches and fries within geographically distributed U.S. cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Boston, and Baltimore. From the entire sample set of beef and chicken, only 12 servings of beef had δ13C < −21‰; for these animals only was a food source other than corn possible. We observed remarkably invariant values of δ15N in both beef and chicken, reflecting uniform confinement and exposure to heavily fertilized feed for all animals. The δ13C value of fries differed significantly among restaurants indicating that the chains used different protocols for deep-frying: Wendy's clearly used only corn oil, whereas McDonald's and Burger King favored other vegetable oils; this differed from ingredient reports. Our results highlighted the overwhelming importance of corn agriculture within virtually every aspect of fast food manufacture.

GAO: Revamping Food Safety

The Government Accountability Office has a new webpage on the need to revamp oversight of food safety.  Here's a short excerpt:

Fifteen federal agencies collectively administer at least 30 laws related to food safety. The two primary agencies are the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is responsible for meat, poultry, and processed egg products, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for virtually all other foods. GAO has reported that this fragmented systems has caused

• inconsistent oversight,
• ineffective coordination, and
• inefficient use of resources.

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European Consumers and Food Labels

Here's an article on a study of consumer purchasing behavior.  European consumers spend about 30 seconds choosing a food product, and they are more likely to read nutrition information when choosing yogurt, breakfast cereals, and "ready meals."

Europeans understand food labels, but taste remains their primary purchase driver

A pan-European study by the European Food Information Council (EUFIC), presents interesting information for the food industry - with food labels found to be widely understood and recognised. “While there are several nutrition labelling schemes across Europe, our findings show that people recognise them and generally know how to use them to make informed nutrition choices,” commented Professor Klaus Grunert of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, who conducted the study for EUFIC. “Nutrition labelling should be seen as a key element in a rounded public health strategy.”

more

FDA Announces Nutrition Roundtable Discussion with Stakeholders

The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has scheduled a Nutrition Roundtable Discussion on Friday, December 12, 2008 from 1:00 until 3:30 PM, at the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Harvey W. Wiley Building, 5100 Paint Branch Parkway, College Park, Maryland.

The purpose of the Roundtable is to communicate FDA's nutrition activities and provide status updates in the following tentative list of topics: foods referred to as Functional Foods, Health Claims, Evidence Based Review Guidance, Critical Path project on Biomarkers for use in Health Claims, Front-of-Pack Labeling, the collaboration between FDA and USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion for nutrition education and outreach, "Spot the Block" for 'Tweens' children 9 to 12 years, and other issues, for example, sodium status and implementation of section 912 of FDAAA.

The Roundtable format will consist of a panel of experts led by Stephen Sundlof, D.V.M, Ph.D., CFSAN Director, with remarks from David Acheson, MD, FDA Associate Commissioner, and a question and answer session. Information regarding registration is posted online: Registration for Nutrition Roundtable Discussion with Stakeholders.

Buy a cupcake? Not in school

From the New York Times:

Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods

. . . The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. . . .

It seems cupcakes and cookies don't comply with the restrictions on the fat and sugar content of foods sold to students. Since I think almonds are one of the best snack choices around (and more than 35% of the calories are from fat), I get a little ruffled every time I see this kind of restriction.  It is hard, however, to defend a cupcake. -- DMB

Call for papers: Science Food and Nutrition Panel at American Sociological Association

Proposals are being accepted for a panel on Science, Food and Nutrition at the 2009 American Sociological Association meeting, which takes place August 8-11 in San Francisco. 

The panel seeks to bring together scholars to consider how interactions among environments, publics, scientific practices, governance and technologies shape food and nutrition systems.

The meeting website is http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/leftnav/meetings/2009_call_for_papers

Look under the Section on Science, Knowledge & Technology, and click the Science, Food, and Nutrition session.  Submissions are accepted starting December 1, 2008. The deadline for paper submissions is Wednesday, January 14, 2009.

Contact: David Schleifer, Haas Fellow, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Phone: 215-873-8240, Fax: 215-629-5240