Food safety

Pink Slime Producer Permanently Shuts Down Plants

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Sarah Damian – May 9, 2012

Beef Products Inc. (BPI) – maker of ammoniated beef trimmings, or "pink slime" – announced that it will permanently close three of its four plants on May 25, a move that reveals the consequences of secrecy and nondisclosure in the food industry.

Since late March, when BPI temporarily suspended all but one of its processing plants, the company hoped to shift consumer sentiment by attacking media coverage of pink slime and using meat-producing governors (including Ag Gag supporter Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad) as ambassadors for gross product.

Mad cow discovery ignites concerns

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Sarah Damian – April 27, 2012

Tuesday's announcement of the fourth case of mad cow disease discovered in the U.S. has sparked much debate about current testing and other preventive food safety measures.

According to the USDA, the California dairy cow had been "euthanized after it developed lameness and became recumbent," which is the required step with any downer cow over 30 months old that is too sick or tired to stand – due to a federal law implemented in 2009.

US beef industry profits from fast-growing exports

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Steve Karnowski – April 26, 2012

Exports are big business for the U.S. beef industry, which shipped a record $5.4 billion worth of beef abroad last year.

It was the first year sales surpassed those in 2003, when exports to Asia collapsed amid the first U.S. mad cow disease scare. Before Tuesday's announcement that mad cow disease had been found in a California dairy cow, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted exports would drop slightly this year as ranchers limit production because of drought and high feed costs.

Cuts to CFIA put food supply at pre-listeriosis outbreak risk: PSAC

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Chris Plecash – April 23, 2012

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz insists that cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in the federal government’s 2012 budget won’t compromise food safety, but the Public Service Alliance of Canada says that job cuts at the agency will roll back improvements to food inspection that were made in response to the 2008 listeriosis outbreak.

“We’re looking at administrative money for the most part, programming is not being affected,” Mr. Ritz (Battlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.) told The Hill Times following the federal budget’s March 29 tabling. “There will be no changes in frontline inspectors.”

Bum Steer: How Big Pharma Dominates Meat Science

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Tom Philpott – April 19, 2012

It isn't just ourselves or our pets that have been getting bigger over the past couple of decades. Turns out, our beef cows have become gigantic too. How big? According to an excellent article by Melody Petersen in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "the average weight of a fattened steer sold to a packing plant is now roughly 1,300 pounds—up from 1,000 pounds in 1975."

That's a hefty 30 percent gain. What gives? According to Peterson, the main reason is pharmaceutical: heavy use of antibiotics, hormones, and other growth-enhancing drugs. Peterson untangles the web that connects pharmaceutical giants like Merck to professors at big public land-grant universities, who not only act as paid researchers to develop new products but also as shills who appeal directly to cattle feedlot operators.

Controversial food inspection changes in USA

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Sarah Damian – April 19, 2012

Last night, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer interviewed a USDA inspector – whose voice was distorted and image revealed only in shadow – to discuss the agency's plan to deregulate poultry inspection by expanding a pilot program known as HIMP.

The inspector, a whistleblower who brought concerns regarding HIMP to FIC, told ABC why the proposal – which speeds up the rate birds move through processing plants and shifts oversight duties to industry – is a terrible idea.

Plan to Let Poultry Plants Inspect Birds Is Criticized

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Ron Nixon – April 4, 2012

Federal food safety inspectors said a proposal by the Agriculture Department to expand a pilot program that allows private companies to take over the inspections at poultry plants could pose a health risk by allowing contaminated meat to reach customers.

Currently, the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors are stationed along the assembly lines in poultry plants and examine the birds for blemishes, feces or visible defects before they are processed.

Court Orders FDA to Act on Antibiotic Use in Animal Agriculture

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Sarah Damian – March 23, 2012

Great news! A federal court ruled Thursday that FDA must finally stop lagging when it comes to regulating the overuse of antibiotics in farm animals and follow through on its 1977 proposal to ban the non-therapeutic use of two common antibiotics in animal feed, unless the makers of the drugs can prove their safety.

Yes, the FDA proposal was in limbo for three-and-a-half decades until the agency quietly abandoned it in December 2011, only to limit use of a less common antibiotic in January.

Drowning in Herbicide: Monsanto Ignores Health Concerns

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Sarah Damian – February 8, 2012

Monsanto, a self-proclaimed solver of global agriculture problems, has really just brought more and more chemicals into our food supply. GAP coalition partner, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), gave the company a failing grade yesterday in documenting eight ways Monsanto has taken agriculture in the wrong direction.

In addition to suppressing independent research on its controversial products and spending millions to lobby Congress against measures that threaten the industrial agriculture status quo, Monsanto has brought troubling threats to human and environmental health with the widespread application of its glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide.

Scientists Give Monsanto an ‘F’ in Sustainable Agriculture

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February 7, 2012

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today published a new web feature documenting how agribusiness giant Monsanto Company is failing to deliver on its promise to make the U.S. agriculture system more sustainable. A sustainable system would produce an adequate supply of food, safeguard the environment, and protect farmers’ bottom lines at the same time. Monsanto, UCS says, fails this three-pronged test.

“Monsanto talks about ‘producing more, conserving more, improving lives,’ but its products are largely not living up to those aspirations,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with UCS’s Food and Environment Program. “In reality, the company is producing more engineered seeds and herbicide and improving its bottom line, but at the expense of conservation and long-term sustainability.”

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