"food safety" news and stories

They say 9/11 changed everything, and after a recent report by CBS News, we're liable to believe it.

It used to be that the only thing to worry about at the hotel breakfast buffet was whether the guy ahead of you scooping out a second helping of scrambled eggs from the chafing dish was a regular hand washer. Now you can add salad bars and buffets to the list of places where terrorists may strike next.

Citing a "key Intelligence source," CBS News reports that the federal government uncovered an al Qaeda plot earlier this year to poison salad bars and buffets at a variety of undisclosed locations. The report quotes from an al Qaeda website where terror leaders call for "...attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations" to "add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy."

Specifically, terrorists have proposed using the poisons ricin and cyanide, both of which can be fatal in small doses.

Intelligence officials say that they don't want to alarm the public, though they have briefed security officers at several restaurant and hotel chains.

Remember a few weeks ago when we broke down the FDA Food Safety Modernzation Act? After 70 years, the Senate had finally passed the bill after it passed in the House over a year prior. It promised to give the FDA power to issue recalls and to see procedural records kept by food producers. We said it looked to be smooth sailing to the House and then off to the President's desk. Guess we jinxed it, because the House flagged a flaw that stalled it even more: The Senate version included a fee that would be taxed on any food producer whose food is recalled. But all taxes need to be written by the House.

So it got tucked into the spending bill last week, which failed. With time running out on this lame-duck session, Food Safety was thought to be dead. But in somewhat of a Christmas miracle, perhaps, the Senate has fixed the problem and passed it unanimously late last night, with the Tester Amendment (that is, the exemption for small farmers) intact. The House and President Obama have already stated support, so hopefully the bill that House representative John Dingell (D-MI) said had more "fits and starts" than any other will finally be brought to law within the week.

In case you missed the news yesterday, it was a big day for food -- the Food Safety Modernization Act passed in the Senate, inching it ever closer to becoming law and strengthening the Food and Drug Administration's power to keep our food system safe, like allowing the FDA to issue recalls without a voluntary tip-off from individual food producers who often wait too long.

This map was developed by Food & Water Watch to demonstrate just why our food legislation needs updating. More than seventy years ago, Congress passed the still-standing Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to give the FDA power to approve products, mostly drugs, for market. But as you can see, much has changed since then. Farming has become less as nature intended and more like a factory, with livestock and vegetables grown like product (genetically modified if that's best for business), rather than as a relationship with the natural environmental cycle we're given.

Seventy years and a Thanksgiving recess later, the Senate has passed a new plan for food safety. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act had passed in the House more than a year ago, in July 2009, and was sitting with the Senate till this morning. Since the House has expressed much support of this bill over the year, it should be smooth sailing as it runs through their votes this final time around and off to Obama's desk.

Lord, C-SPAN and #foodsafety Twitter followers know it wasn't easy. After much debate over proposed amendments from Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), this new legislation will grant the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) power to issue recalls -- something you might have assumed it already had the power to do. Issuing recalls was actually left up to individual food producers who often wait too long, as in the recall of more than 500 million eggs that sickened 1,600 people this past August. Also on Congress's mind: the fact that every year, 5,000 Americans die from food-borne illnesses.

The bill also requires food producers to file food safety plans with the government so that hazards can be analyzed in states of emergency. A food tracking system will also be put in place to make it easier to find sources of contamination during outbreaks. Finally, the bill will enforce equal regulations on imported foods so that they are held to the same safety standards as domestic foods -- perhaps something else you thought was already being done.

Over the past 70 years, the U.S. has seen drastic changes in food operation, including the introduction of industrial agriculture and mass foodborne illnesses. And yet standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have barely changed, save for the USDA's and FDA's joint egg inspection plan introduced on July 9th.

The outdated rules have left the FDA with insufficient funds and without authority to order recalls -- that call, believe it or not, is left to the individual companies, which often wait too long, resulting in a slew of consumer illness reports. A new bill -- the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) -- would finally update standards and give the FDA the power it now needs to better moderate our current system, including conducting more frequent inspections of high-risk facilities. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives over a year ago, on July 30, 2009, and has been sitting with the Senate ever since.