food safety
Senate sends ag-reauthorization bill to House
With time running out, the Senate passed and sent to the House a bill to reauthorize federal inspection of export grain and a requirement for meatpackers to report purchase prices of cattle, hogs and sheep.
Peanut exec sentenced to 28 years for salmonella outbreak
A federal judge sentenced Stewart Parnell, owner of the now-defunct Peanut Corp. of America, to 28 years in prison in connection with a salmonella outbreak that killed nine people and sickened hundreds, said the Associated Press.
Key senator says he will push for more FDA food-safety money
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA and FDA will press for money for the FDA if there is an agreement by the White House and Congress to raise spending caps, said Agri-Pulse.
Obama selects FDA newcomer Califf as next commissioner
President Obama selected Robert Califf, a new arrival in FDA's senior ranks, to become the next commissioner of the agency that regulates products that account for 20 percent of consumer spending.
FDA updates rules on disease prevention in food and feed
The Obama administration issued two rules, applying to food and feed, that require companies to analyze weak spots in their operations and implement plans to prevent contamination of their products. The so-called preventive-control rules are the first of seven that the FDA is writing under the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act.
Life sentence urged in salmonella outbreak in peanut butter
The U.S. Probation Office, in a pre-sentencing report, recommended life in prison for Stewart Parnell, the former chief executive of Peanut Corporation of America, says Food Safety News.
Vilsack asks China to scale back ban on U.S. poultry
During a 45-minute telephone call, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked his Chinese counterpart to scale back the ban on imports of U.S. poultry imposed because of avian influenza in the western half of the country. Agriculture Minister Han Changfu demurred, saying Chinese law required a full-country ban, Vilsack told the North American Agricultural Journalists. "They will have a team come to the United States in the summer" to see firsthand U.S. biosecurity controls designed to spot outbreaks and prevent them from spreading.
Doubts about White House proposal for single food agency
Three weeks after the White House proposed a central agency for food safety, the proposal "is already running into opposition from some food safety experts, consumer groups and the inspectors who would be most affected.
FDA Commissioner Hamburg says will leave agency in March
Margaret Hamburg, head of the FDA for six years, says she will step down as commissioner at the end of March. She announced the decision in a letter to employees, in which she praised the FDA's accomplishments...
“The new food police”
In a long-form story, Modern Farmer describes the evolution of food safety operations at FDA. "Over the last century, there’d been a shift toward large, centralized food distribution systems.
Empty calories and climate change
Climate change could create a new kind of empty calories, by indirectly reducing the nutrition content of food crops, says the Guardian.
China issues new five-year certificate for its GE rice
The world's largest rice grower and consumer, China, renewed the biosafety certificates for five additional years for two varieties of genetically engineered rice developed within the country, says Reuters.
China considers law requiring GMO food labels
Chinese lawmakers are considering a proposed law to require labeling of all foods that contain genetically modified organisms, says China Daily.
Food is the fight in US-Europe free-trade talks
In the drawn-out negotiation over a trans-Atlantic trade agree, "no single issue is inflaming the debate more than food — specifically U.S. calls for Europe to open its door to long-banned American foodstuffs that are hormone-treated, chemically sanitized or genetically modified," says the Washington Post.
FDA, USDA need more coordination of food safety-Report
The government lacks an over-arching performance plan for food safety nor do USDA and FDA engage in broad-based collaboration of their overlapping food safety programs, said the Government Accountability Office.
Hong Kong bans poultry meat from Oregon county
Food safety officials in Hong Kong banned imports of poultry meat and products from Douglas County, Oregon, where avian influenza was found in a backyard poultry flock, said Xinhua.
Slow progress on label for mechanically tenderized meat
Consumer groups fear the slow pace of rule-writing may delay until 2018 the labeling of mechanically tenderized meat, says Food Safety News.
Four Chinese poultry plants approved to ship to US
USDA said it certified four processing plants in China's Shandong Province to cook and ship poultry meat to U.S. customers, the latest step in a decade-old proposal.