Just as Southeastern oyster producers are clamoring for the government to stay out of their business, catfish farmers have launched a new ad campaign asking for more regulation of their industry.
Catfish farmers contend imported seafood should be held to the same stringent standards now applied to imported beef, poultry and pork. Unlike those commodities, which are inspected by the USDA, imported seafood is the domain of the FDA. According to government reports, only 2 percent of the 5.2 billion pounds of seafood that entered the U.S. last year was inspected.
"People are taking it for granted that everything's inspected, and they need to know what's going on," CFA president Joey Lowery says. "This is something that shouldn't even be negotiable, food safety for the American people."
Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade is at the center of an underage drinking debate in Maine after a teen at Houlton High School brought to school a bottle of the lemonade that he'd purchased from a store.
The Bangor Daily News reports officials from the Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition and the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse are investigating because the naturally fermented beverage contains less than 0.5 percent alcohol. The incident has other officials proposing the lemonade -- brewed since 1905 -- be reclassified as "imitation liquor," which can't be sold or consumed by minors -- a move that Fentiman's officials are fighting.
The company acknowledges that some alcohol is left in the beverage.
"We remove some components of the product during that process and also add flavoring," Greg Warwick, the president of Fentimans North America, told the paper. "What we end up with is a product that is a mixture of less than 1/2 percent alcohol because of the fermentation process. The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has deemed this safe for all ages. There should be no restrictions on the distribution or sale of the product."
The school's principal said the student turned in the half-consumed bottle of lemonade after he read there could be alcohol in the soda.
"There was no intent on the student's part to break any school rules or laws," Principal Martin Bouchard said. "This was just a harmless incident."
Should children be banned from drinking naturally fermented soda pop? Let us know in the comments.
On Tuesday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released its list of Top 10 riskiest foods policed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. According the the report, the items on the "FDA Top 10" account for nearly 40-percent of all reported foodborne outbreaks since 1990. The CSPI is a non-profit food safety and public health organization.
The FDA regulates nearly 80 percent of the nation's food supply including fruits and vegetables, seafood, egg and dairy products and most packaged foods.
But are they being overly cautious? Read the list after the jump.
The Skinny Chef's Spicy Tuna Cups. Photo: Jennifer Iserloh
Making proper sushi rice and learning to roll your own takes a lot of practice. But even if you feel overwhelmed wrapping sushi, these little pickled cucumber cups are just the easiest thing to make and you can fill them with all sorts of tasty bites.
These nibbles are made from sushi grade tuna that I buy at The Lobster Place in the Chelsea Market in New York City. But if you don't have a great purveyor locally and aren't a fan of raw fish, you can always use the same amount of baked salmon. It works just as well in my recipe, although the texture will be firmer
So what's the deal with mercury? Learn more about tuna and mercury and get Jennifer's Spicy Tuna recipe after the jump.
Every once in a while it's good to have a refresher course in kitchen safety. The FDA's 1996 flick "Dirty Little Secrets" does just that with a dramatic announcer, toilet paper in the fridge and a copy of "The Silver Palate Cookbook." Did they miss anything? Weigh in.
By Pervaiz Shallwani We're big proponents of buying local when possible and just spied some curious data about 5,500 iPhone users buying a $3 Locavore app (created by a Slashfood friend) in a mere month. It tells iPhone addicts what's in season, what's en route and where nearby farmers' markets are located.
Whoa. We wondered what other yummy things we could do if we got with the times and finally embraced an iPhone for our foodie needs. Boy, were we shocked. There are hundreds of free and paid downloads including one for beer, one for soda and a fast-food meal calorie counter.
Not only are food nerd darlings Serious Eats, Food Network and Yelp at our fingertips, so is the FDA with food recall news (though their freebie Twitter also works), a guide to finding cheap or free kids' meals at nearby eateries and Twecipe, which matches the dregs of those fridge contents to a recipe.
All this edible ammo available at the touch of a button makes us wonder whether Googling our munching needs is becoming just so 2008 and whether we should cave to the iFeed – er, iPhone -- trend. Have you?
Ever learn about a food recall half an hour too late? There's nothing worse than finding out that there's been an e. Coli outbreak in the tomato crop right after finishing a nice, big plate of tomatoes and basil or discovering that the pistachio crop is tainted while in the midst of devouring a giant bag of the tasty little morsels.
Thanks to FoodRecalls, a new Twitter site, the latest food alerts can be delivered to your computer or cell phone in the blink of an eye. From the recent pull of Lian How brand spices to Sconza Candy Company's recall of its trail mix, you won't have to wait for the five o'clock news to tell you what you needed to know at noon!
The FDA itself has a Twitter page. However, while their recalls often come a half hour to an hour faster than Food Recall's, they do not seem to be as comprehensive as the private site. Furthermore, they aren't accompanied by Food Recall's endearing image of Winston, the "kitten with a paw over its eyes."
While we're on the topic, which recall do you reckon Winston is related to?
Have you seen the label for Diet Coke Plus? Check that out to the right -- the soft drink claims that it's "Diet Coke with VITAMINS & MINERALS"! That means that Diet Coke is finally healthy, right? Not quite.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the FDA has sent Coca-Cola Co. a warning letter stating that the beverage doesn't contain enough vitamins and minerals to be considered "plus." That word is, apparently, reserved for the foods that have at least "10% more of the reference daily intake or daily reference value of a nutrient than a similar product." And they also note that it's not quite kosher to try and make a carbonated beverage fortified.
Coke has no plans to change their label, and the FDA is waiting for them to "take prompt action to correct these violations." So, it should be an exciting little war come the New Year.
This past Thursday, actor Jeremy Piven from HBO's "Entourage" withdrew from his role in the Broadway play "Speed-the-Plow" due to high levels of mercury in his bloodstream. The Food Section, fellow food blog, states that Piven's doctor, Dr. Carlon Colker, attributes such high levels to a diet of sushi twice a day. Sounds like Piven is going to have to lay off the Sushi for a while.
The Piven incident supports evidence that fish has high levels of mercury that can become toxic in large quantities. Just this past September, I posted about the controversy over the FDA's refusal to acknowledge tuna's mercury toxicity. What's worse? According to a recent article from The Washington Post, the FDA is urging the government to reverse its advisory that women and children should limit how much fish they eat.
The Washington Post article explains that mercury damages the neurological development of fetuses and infants, and it poses a health risk for adults, such as the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The article's information was based on scientific studies. What will it take for the FDA to recognize that too much of certain fish can be toxic?
It's pretty clear that the FDA is a troubled organization. The Food and Drug Administration is chronically under funded and has staffing problems, but does that mean that it should be split into two separate organizations?
According to The Packer.com, one Congressman thinks it should be. Apparently Representative Rosa De Lauro of Connecticut is planning on calling for the split. She wants to create a Food Safety Administration that would be part of the Department of Health and Human Services. That would leave the drug and cosmetic oversight functions in their own organization.
Though a shake up might not hurt, I'm not sure that folding food safety into DHHS would do much to help. The FDA can't possibly keep up with its responsibilities because it is so underfunded. If that problem could be fixed, then maybe the FDA, as it stands now, could do the job of protecting our food.
About three years ago, my wife and I decided to stop eating high fructose corn syrup. At the time, it seemed like a minor step; however, looking back, I realize that, in that one moment, I transformed from a regular consumer into an insane health freak. While cutting out any type of food is a major step, HFCS was particularly difficult. Unlike meat, cheese, peanuts, or any of the other easily-detectable foods that people cut out of their diets, HFCS lurks in literally thousands of foods. Within a few days of quitting, I found myself obsessively reading labels and cutting out dozens of other foods that I had always taken for granted. I suddenly became one of those people, the ones who read the ingredients on blister packs of preserves at the diner, then sigh and eat their toast with just butter.
I don't mean to make it look like cutting out HFCS has been nothing but misery. In the months following our decision, my wife and I lost a lot of weight, discovered tons of new foods, and ended up enjoying the opportunity to reconsider our diet. While I'm sure that cutting out HFCS isn't responsible for all the health benefits that we experienced at that time, it seems more than coincidental that my nasty headaches went away, we' started getting sick a lot less, and we stopped experiencing major energy crashes. Nowadays, I occasionally notice a stale taste in foods when I eat out, generally followed by extreme sleepiness about an hour later. While I haven't done a double-blind taste test, trial and error has convinced me that HFCS is the culprit.
Recently, the Corn Refiners Association announced that they are launching a $30 million advertising campaign that is aimed at convincing consumers that HFCS is a natural compound, fundamentally the same as honey. Of course, unlike honey, HFCS is the product of a complex, chemical-intensive refining process that takes place in an industrial setting, but why quibble? Strangely, the FDA has agreed with them. Unfortunately, rather than convince me that HFCS is all-natural, the FDA's stance has made me seriously question the integrity of the federal government when it comes to food purity.
There's a new (well, old, but gaining momentum) controversy in the world of food: should food dyes be banned?
Many people want the dyes (with names like Red 40 and Blue 2, which sounds like a score from an episode of Hell's Kitchen) used in food banned because they think they might cause hyperactivity and ADHD. The Food and Drug Administration insists that study after study has shown that food dyes/artificial coloring is safe for kids and adults to eat. Though as CBS' Nancy Cordes says, a study a few years ago of 21 top studies done showed that the dyes could actually have an effect on the restlessness and attention problems in children. A non-profit group is asking for the dyes to be banned.
I have to admit that food dye is an ingredient I never even think about when buying packaged foods. How about you?
Is it just me or is a lot of food being recalled lately? Or maybe it's just that food has always been recalled, but we're just more aware of the news.
Whatever it is, the most recent news is that the FDA has issued an import alert on cantaloupe from Agropecuaria Montelibano, a Honduran grower and packer. Fruit from this company appears to be associated with a Salmonella Litchfield outbreak in the United States and Canada. Apparently, about 50 people have fallen ill.
I'm not exactly sure what an "import alert" is and whether that's better, worse, or not really associated with a total recall, but if you've got the orange-fleshed melons, check the sticker for the origin, and if there's no sticker, well, when in doubt, throw it out.
Okay, so giving a box of chocolates to your sweetheart on Valentine's Day is just about a requirement. If they don't get that big heart shaped box, there had better be a very good reason. If you're looking for a good reason not to give those chocolates, here is a great one.
The good news is that all bits of icky stuff are ground up so finely that you'd never even know it was there. Apparently the FDA has regulations about this kind of thing. The FDA has limits on the amount of fragments that can be present in any sample. According to one company's spokesman, "It's really impossible to exclude hair, bugs and fibers from chocolate or any other natural food product."
I say, what I don't know won't hurt me. People ingest all kinds of weird/bad things all the time. Our stomachs and digestive systems were designed to deal with oddities, to a certain extent. I know I'm looking forward to my heart shaped box of chocolates!
After six years testing the safety of cloning, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed cloned animals fit for consumption.
Don't like it? Well, you don't have much of a choice. The FDA also decided that labels won't have to divulge whether or not they contain parts from cloned animals, because the ingredients are no different from that of animals raised the old-fashioned way. Besides, aside from the creep-out factor, most people probably wouldn't choose to eat a cloned animal to begin with; they cost ten times as much as your average, farm-raised cow or pig.
Americans should be used to to science and industry playing a starring role in our food choices. From pesticides to force-fed ducks to hormone-laden dairy products, it shouldn't be any surprise that cloned animals were the next step.
And our food is already meddled with, sometimes without our knowledge (ever wonder how you can perfectly fresh peaches and strawberries in the middle of February?), and sometimes quite obviously (plutots, anyone?) But while this shouldn't come as a shock, this newest agricultural development does seem like an eerie foreshadowing of events to come.
Have you seen the label for Diet Coke Plus? Check that out to the right -- the soft drink claims that it's "Diet Coke with VITAMINS & MINERALS"! That means that Diet Coke is finally healthy, right? Not quite.
There's a new (well, old, but gaining momentum) controversy in the world of food: should food dyes be banned?
Okay, so giving a box of chocolates to your sweetheart on 
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