Food Law Prof Blog

E Coli in cookie dough -- don't eat it!

We shouldn't eat raw cookie dough anyway, but this is scary. FDA news release:

FDA CONFIRMS E. COLI O157:H7 IN PREPACKAGED NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE REFRIGERATED COOKIE DOUGH

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has found E. coli O157:H7 (a bacterium that can cause serious food borne illness) in a sample of prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough currently under recall by the manufacturer and marketer, Nestlé USA.  The contaminated sample was collected at Nestlé’s facility in Danville, Va. on June 25, 2009. 

On June 19, the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7.  The warning was based on an epidemiological study conducted by the CDC and several state and local health departments. As of Thursday, June 25, the CDC reports that 69 persons from 29 states have been infected with the outbreak strain. Thirty-four persons have been hospitalized, nine with a severe complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome. No one has died.

Further laboratory testing is needed to conclusively link the E. coli strain found in the product to the same strain that is causing the outbreak.

Nestlé USA has fully cooperated with the FDA and CDC investigation and has recalled all of its prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products.

For answers to consumer questions about this recall and warning, go to: http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm168346.htm.

For more information about E. coli, visit the CDC Web site at: http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/.

Consumers who have additional questions about these products should contact Nestlé USA consumer services at 1-800-559-5025 and/or visit its Web site at www.verybestbaking.com.

For a complete listing of Nestlé USA recalled products go to:
http://www.Nestlé usa.com/PubNews/PressReleaseLibraryDetails.aspx?id=133CC131-A79F-4E84-9C43-C9F99FE5BC99.

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Here's a voluntary recall that didn't happen:

FDA Warns Consumers Not to Eat California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards Brands of Pistachios

Products linked to the previous recall by Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to eat California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards brands of pistachios repacked by Orca Distribution West Inc., Anaheim, Calif. Orca received and repacked pistachios recalled by Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., Terra Bella, Calif.

The pistachios may be contaminated with Salmonella, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.

Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.

The FDA visited Orca as part of its audit checks to follow up on Setton Pistachio’s recall. The FDA found that products subject to Setton Pistachio's recall had been repacked and distributed by Orca under the California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards brands. Orca has not made a public announcement regarding these products. Therefore, the FDA is issuing this press release to alert consumers so that they can take appropriate action.

The products were distributed to retail locations in airports and hotels nationwide. The California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards brands of pistachios were packaged in clear 6 ounce flexible plastic Ziploc bags, UPC Number: 8 10826 01116 2 with Sell By Dates of 7/30/09 and 8/30/09.

FDA Seeks Public Input on Transparency

 This is today:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will host a daylong meeting on June 24, 2009. During this meeting, the FDA will seek recommendations on how to make information on FDA activities and decision-making useful, understandable, and more accessible to the public. The meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT at the National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, 429 L’Enfant Plaza, S.W., Washington, D.C., 20594.

Please note there is no wireless service within the NTSB Conference Center. If you have questions, please e-mail them to Transparency.Meeting@fda.hhs.gov. 

Those who cannot attend the meeting can view the event via live Webcast at: www.fda.gov/transwebcast_june09. After the meeting, the Webcast will be available for viewing at the same link.

For more information:

June 3, 2009 Federal Register Notice

FDA’s Transparency Task Force

FDA’s Transparency Blog

GE Roundtable on Seed Magazine.com

From SeedMagazine.com: Five experts debate the roots of GM opposition, the role of big agribusiness, and whether we’ve achieved real scientific consensus.

. . .

But despite Mon810’s official sanction under EU law, several countries—including France, Austria, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg—have imposed national bans on the GE crop. The most recent addition to this list is Germany, which banned the corn in April, just before this year’s seeds would have been sown.

Ilse Aigner, Germany’s federal agricultural minister, acknowledged that various federal environmental institutes had failed to come to an agreement about Mon810’s environmental risks, but said she was encouraged by the example of Luxembourg, which imposed a moratorium in late March.2

Read the rest of the article here

GE Roundtable on Seed Magazine

From SeedMagazine.com: Five experts debate the roots of GM opposition, the role of big agribusiness, and whether we’ve achieved real scientific consensus.

. . .

But despite Mon810’s official sanction under EU law, several countries—including France, Austria, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg—have imposed national bans on the GE crop. The most recent addition to this list is Germany, which banned the corn in April, just before this year’s seeds would have been sown.

Ilse Aigner, Germany’s federal agricultural minister, acknowledged that various federal environmental institutes had failed to come to an agreement about Mon810’s environmental risks, but said she was encouraged by the example of Luxembourg, which imposed a moratorium in late March.2

Read the rest of the article here

Guilty plea in tainted pet food case

U.S. District Attorney news release:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Nevada company and its owners pleaded guilty in federal court today to distributing a tainted ingredient used to make pet food, which resulted in a nationwide recall of pet food and the death and serious illness of countless pets across the United States in 2007.

“Millions of pet owners were impacted by the pet food recall in 2007,” Whitworth said. “The conduct of these defendants in violating federal health and safety standards caused the deaths and illness of thousands of family pets, as well as anxiety among dog and cat owners across the country and economic harm to many pet food manufacturers.”

more

Canada's Organic Trade Association supports Organic Equivalent Agreement

From Canadian Business.com

The Organic Trade Association in Canada (OTA) responded in support of the announcement that Canada and the United States have signed an equivalency agreement allowing organic products to be traded between the two countries. (blogged here)

"This is a world-first," said Matthew Holmes, OTA in Canada's managing director. "The Government of Canada has just secured nearly unfettered access for Canadian organic farmers and food processors to a market that is over ten times the size of our own. This is a major win for Canada's quickly-growing organic sector, and provides our producers and processors with assurances that they are competing with a level playing field."

Read the article on Canadian Business.com.

Hat tip: Steven H. Sholk

House Energy Committee -- more funding for FDA and food safety

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration significantly more funding and power to police food safety. The bill comes in response to deadly outbreaks of illnesses traced to tainted spinach, peanuts, hot peppers and other foods. It is designed to plug holes in the regulation of most food items other than meat.

More

Hat tip:Steven H. Sholk

U.S., Canada Agreement For Organic Trade Equivalence

USDA News Release:

CHICAGO, June 17, 2009 -- Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced that a first-of-its-kind agreement has been reached between the United States and Canada that will expand opportunities for organic producers in both countries. The "equivalency agreement" follows a review by both nations of the other's organic certification program and a determination that products meeting the standard in the United States can be sold as organic in Canada, and vice versa. Merrigan made this announcement at the All Things Organic Trade Show and Conference in Chicago this morning.

"The production of organic foods is a vibrant growth opportunity for American agriculture, and by agreeing on a common set of organic principles with Canada, we are expanding market opportunities for our producers to sell their products abroad," said Merrigan. "Today's agreement between the world's two largest organic trading partners is an important first step towards global harmonization of organic standards."

There's more.  Read it here.

Hat tip: Steven H. Sholk

Food, Inc. -- a film I want to see

Food, Inc. opens this week in my area:

Of course, the title keeps reminding me of Monsters, Inc., one of my favorites that has nothing to do with food:

More Atlantic salmon now "endangered"

From a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) news release:

NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today extended Endangered Species Act protection to more Atlantic salmon by adding fish in the Penobscot, Kennebec, and Androscoggin rivers and their tributaries to the endangered Gulf of Maine population first listed in 2000. . . .

“Legend has it you could once walk across these rivers on the backs of salmon,” said FWS Acting Director Rowan Gould. “Unfortunately, in most years we are able to count barely 1,000 fish returning to the Penobscot and fewer than a hundred in the other two rivers. If we are ever going to recover this iconic species so that future generations can witness the teeming runs that awed past generations, we need to protect it now throughout the Gulf of Maine.” 

Endangered status under the ESA will now apply to all anadromous (sea-run) Atlantic salmon whose freshwater range covers the watersheds from the Androscoggin River northward along the Maine coast to the Dennys River, an area which includes the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers. It also applies wherever these fish occur in these rivers’ estuaries and marine environment. Hatchery fish used to supplement these natural populations are also included under this rule. 

Read the whole story here

Read an article about this on the Boston Globe website: Feds declare salmon endangered on 3 Maine rivers

Hat tip: Steven H. Sholk

Tracing food origins -- barcodes?

Here's an interesting article from NewScientist.com on the possibility of using barcodes to trace food origins:

Barcodes could reveal your food's credentials, by Mason Inman

. . . Most manufacturers already use barcodes or RFID chips to track their products. But with the help of cheap cellphone and internet access it is becoming possible to collate data from remote locations around the world and make it available to the people who are actually going to eat the food. . . .

One reason for developing such traceability would be to show that food was not grown on land recently occupied by rainforest, for example. Another use would be to confirm the origin of chickens (but not necessarily whether the egg came first):

. . .using isotope analysis of chicken meat to check where and how the birds were farmed. The ratio of carbon isotopes in the meat shows how much corn the birds were fed relative to other grains, while hydrogen isotopes reveal the amount of rainfall where they were raised.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Steven H. Sholk.

FDA Forms Transparency Task Force

FDA News Release:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the formation of a task force to develop recommendations for enhancing the transparency of the agency’s operations and decision-making process.

To support the efforts of the task force, today the FDA issued a Federal Register notice announcing a June 24, 2009, public meeting to solicit recommendations on how the agency can make more available, useful and understandable information on its activities and decisions.

"Our administration is committed to making government open and transparent," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "The Transparency Task Force will give the American people a seat at the table and make the FDA more open and accountable."

"President Obama has pledged to strengthen our democracy by creating an unprecedented level of openness and public participation in government, and the FDA looks forward to participating in this process," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “I have asked the Transparency Task Force to deliver recommendations to me for ways to make more information available and foster better understanding of decision-making.”

The task force will be chaired by Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, M.D., and will include center directors, the associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, chief scientist, and the chief counsel.

"Implementation of the Transparency Task Force’s recommendations should make agency actions and decisions, and their underlying processes and bases, more transparent to the public," said Sharfstein. "I look forward to chairing this task force and reporting our findings to Commissioner Hamburg."

The Transparency Task Force will:

• Seek public input on issues related to transparency;
• Recommend ways that the agency can better explain its operations compatible with the appropriate protection of confidential information;
• Identify information the FDA should provide about specific agency operations and activities, including enforcement actions and product approvals;
• Identify problems and barriers, both internal and external, to providing useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision-making to the public;
• Identify appropriate tools and new technologies for informing the public;
• Recommend changes to the FDA’s current operations, including internal policies and guidance, to improve the agency’s ability to provide information to the public in a timely and effective manner;
• Recommend legislative or regulatory changes, if appropriate, to improve the FDA’s ability to provide information to the public; and
• Submit a written report to the commissioner on the Transparency Task Force’s findings and recommendations.

The establishment of the task force follows President Obama’s Jan. 21, 2009 memorandum directing executive agencies to find new ways of making information available to the public rapidly and in a form that is easily accessible and user-friendly.

For more information:

FDA Transparency Task Force

Transparency and Open Government: President Obama’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies