Tag Archives: Usda

What’s in a label? Is chicken injected with salt and water ‘all-natural’

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Food is 21st century snake oil.

And shopping for food can be so confusing.

Natural, organic, local, antioxidants, welfare-friendly, whole wheat made predominantly with white flour, hormone-free, hucksterism of whatever kind.

Juliana Barbassa of Associated Press reports today that a disagreement among poultry producers about whether chicken injected with salt, water and other ingredients can be promoted as "natural" has prompted federal officials to consider changing labeling guidelines.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had maintained that if chicken wasn’t flavored artificially or preserved with chemicals, it could carry the word "natural" on the package.

But the agency agreed to take another look at its policy after some producers, politicians and health advocates noted that about one-third of chicken sold in the U.S. was injected with additives that could represent up to 15 percent of the meat’s weight, doubling or tripling its sodium content. Some argue that could mislead or potentially harm consumers who must limit their salt intake.

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service plans to issue new proposed rules this fall.

Perdue, the nation’s third largest poultry producer, is among those pushing for a change. The company has joined a group called the Truthful Labeling Coalition, which has hired a lobbyist and launched an advertising campaign.

The two largest chicken processors, Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson Foods, are among those that affix "natural" labels to chicken injected with extra salt and water.

A buyer perusing the chicken counter at a San Francisco supermarket agreed.

Muembo Muanza, 30, said he read the label and considered the price but never thought to check the salt content when buying fresh chicken.

"If it says natural, I expect it to be all natural – nothing but chicken," he said.

I’d be more interested if food-types would start marketing based on microbial food safety.

Didn’t they say this in the 1970s? FDA should adopt risk-based approach to food safety

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Really, didn’t the U.S. National Academy of Sciences say the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture and others should do this 30 years ago?

To more proactively tackle food safety problems, FDA should implement a risk-based approach in which data and expertise are marshaled to pinpoint where along the production, distribution, and handling chains there is the greatest potential for contamination and other problems, the report says. The agency would then be able to direct appropriate amounts of its resources and attention to those high-risk areas and increase the chances of catching problems before they turn into widespread outbreaks, said the committee that wrote the report.

A risk-based approach would give FDA’s food safety officials the strategic vision needed to evaluate and plan for food safety concerns rather than tackling problems on a case-by-case basis, the report says. Without good information, agency officials cannot identify where its resources are needed most or determine which policy interventions are most effective. FDA has insufficient analytical expertise and infrastructure to gather, manage, and use data effectively. The agency should identify its data needs and review its policies for sharing data with other agencies and organizations.

Uh huh. How many people got sick while this report was being put together? Did the report prevent anyone from barfing?

Fake veterinarian worked for USDA?

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I was out with the family picking up some Chinese and wine last night and a woman waiting for her take-out said, “Oh, I’m glad to know you eat here.”

“Not usually, but it’s Chinese so everything’s cooked.”

She then introduced herself as a veterinary student at Kansas State University who’d seen me lecture a few weeks ago. And then she asked me if I’d seen the story about the fake U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian.

I said, “Slipped my mind.”

I don’t see everything so if barfblogcom readers see anything of interest, please send along.

The student did, and it concerns a story that aired in Feb. 2010 in Atlanta.

WSB TV reported that a man used fraudulent credentials to land a job as a veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture where he worked in Atlanta-based food safety and inspection service for the past four years.

I don’t know how much of this is true or why the story didn’t get much national play – so judge for yourselves.

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/22526579/

Does USDA overrule its own veterinarians on the slaughterhouse floor? Live testimony today

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Today’s The USA Today (I never tire of using that) reports that Dean Wyatt, a supervisory veterinarian at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service will tell a congressional hearing today that USDA superiors failed to act on reports of illegal and unsafe slaughterhouse practices, letting suspect operations continue despite public health risks.

The story says Wyatt will detail instances in which he and other inspectors were overruled when citing slaughterhouses for violations such as shocking and butchering days-old calves that were too weak or sick to stand. He also describes being threatened with transfer or demotion after citing a plant for butchering conscious pigs, despite rules that they first be stunned and unconscious.

In 2008 and early 2009, Wyatt ordered suspensions in operations three times at Bushway Packing Inc., in Grand Isle, VT. Among other things, he found downed calves being dragged through pens to slaughter — a violation because contact with excrement can contaminate animals. In each case, he says, managers overruled him and allowed the plant to keep running.

Bushway subsequently made headlines last fall when the Humane Society of the United States filmed undercover video of workers hitting and using electric prods to move calves. The plant was shut down.

CBS Radio called about 5 a.m. for comment – they’re so polite, they always e-mail first to see if I’m awake so they don’t wake the household. As soon as I said, yeah, let’s do it, 1-year-old Sorenne awoke so I missed the first call to change a diaper and provide 8 ounces of milk. But, the reporter at CBS in N.Y. agreed it was a good call, kid first, then radio soundbites, in which I said something along the lines of, I don’t know anything about the specifics of these cases, but the best slaughterhouses won’t be held hostage by a dude with a video camera, and will get way, way out in front of the minimal standards required by USDA. Maybe it’s too early and I’m still dreaming.

Doyle was ready to take FSIS job; finances got in the way

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U.S. President Obama has been big on the food safety rhetoric but short on actions.

Sounds familiar.

I don’t expect much from government – providing safe food is the responsibility of producers and everyone from farm-to-fork, government is there to set a minimal standard – so I’m rarely disappointed. Like I tell Amy, the lower you set your expectations of me, the less likely you are to be disappointed.

Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post reports this morning the Obama administration has had a difficult time filling the post of chief food safety official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it wasn’t until this week — one year into his term — that the president nominated someone to assume that role.

Elisabeth Hagen, 40, a physician with four years’ experience in food safety, was not the first choice. Most of her career has been spent teaching and practicing medicine as an infectious disease specialist. She left medicine in 2006 and went to the USDA, where she was quickly promoted through the ranks of the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to become the chief medical officer last year.

Layton reports that last February, the administration approached Mike Doyle, a nationally known microbiologist who directs the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. Doyle said he was offered the job and was vetted, but the day before the announcement was to be made in May, his nomination collapsed.

The White House wanted Doyle to divest his financial interest in a patented microbial wash for meat that he had developed. Doyle offered to defer his interests until his government service was completed but the administration refused, he said.

"It’s just an awful lot to ask for. I would have taken a more than 50 percent pay cut to go to Washington, and this would have been a very big financial hit."

The administration also sought out Caroline Smith Dewaal, the director of food safety at Center for Science in the Public Interest, but Dewaal’s nomination came to a halt in August because she was a registered lobbyist, which violated the administration’s policy against hiring lobbyists.

The Administration didn’t know that before?

Doyle did add this of Hagen:

"I don’t know of her personally. She’s got a steep learning curve."
 

Does the USDA undersecretary for food safety actually do anything? Does fililng that job mean less people will barf?

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Do people really expect government to magically make food safe?

Government sets expectations and minimal standards, that’s why tax dollars are spent, but the whining about a lack of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety has taken on histrionic tones.

Given the ridiculous size of the U.S. budget deficit, and I don’t wanna go all Ross Perot here, but the salary savings from not filling the post have to at least be considered.

Elizabeth Weise writes in today’s USA Today that calls from consumer advocates and politicians are growing louder for the Obama administration to name an undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, a position unfilled for more than a year.

What kind of calls? Writing uninformed blog posts is hardly a call. And who are these consumer advocates? How is that defined?

Weise writes  that some consumer advocates say some fights only an undersecretary-level appointee can undertake include:

•Getting needle-tenderized meat, which can push E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella deep into steaks and chops where cooking doesn’t easily kill it, labeled so consumers know it shouldn’t be eaten rare. A current outbreak linked to this type of meat has sickened 21 people.

•Giving the USDA the right to name not just grocery stores that have sold recalled meat, but also restaurants.

•Using live video to monitor animals in pens, allowing short-staffed inspectors to do more.

Any retail chain concerned about consumers could institute any of those changes today. The best should do so without nagging from the nanny state.
 

This is how irrelevant Washington, D.C is when it comes to setting food safety policy

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Washington can set a minimal food safety standard, and taxpayers should get something for their money, but the resources and time spent lobbying the politicians and bureaucrats seem to have a low return on investment.

Tomorrow’s USA Today reports that a senator on the committee overseeing the National School Lunch Program called Monday for the government to raise its standards for meat sent to schools across the nation because McDonald’s, Costco, Burger King, and Jack in the Box all do a better job of food safety sampling.
 

US school lunch program needs more food safety accountability

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Today’s USA Today has a feature story today about meat served in the U.S. school lunch program and asks why certain batches of meat were excluded from a Salmonella-related recall and outbreak last year. What stands out is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture initially refused to match suppliers with positive test results as part of an analysis of 146,000 tests for bacteria including salmonella and E. coli.

USDA spokesman Bobby Gravitz wrote in an e-mail to USA Today that divulging their identities "would discourage companies from contracting to supply product for the National School Lunch Program and hamper our ability to provide the safe and nutritious foods to America’s school children."

The newspaper appealed the USDA’s decision. On Monday, the department released the names of the companies.

Although one company, Beef Packers Inc., appeared to stand out for the wrong reasons – in 2007 and 2008, its rate of positive tests for salmonella measured almost twice the rate that’s typical for the nation’s best-performing, high-volume ground beef producers, USA TODAY found — the company kept getting government business. Since 2003, Beef Packers has garnered almost $60 million in contracts.

That sounds eerily familiar to what happened in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales that killed five-year-old Mason Jones (left) and sickened another 160 kids eating their school lunches, where buyers were quick to look the other way to save a pound. A public inquiry into the outbreak concluded the procurement process was, “seriously flawed in relation to food safety.”

One way to push food safety through the system is to demand continuous improvement from suppliers in terms of lowering the number of pathogen positive results. Any consumer-oriented company is going to insist on evidence of such steps or they will take their business elsewhere. Those overseeing school lunches for U.S. kids should demand the same.

What also stands out is that despite the focus on food safety of the feature and an additional heart-wrenching story about a child sickened 11 years ago through the school lunch program, a third story about a company trying to provide low-cost, healthier, natural (whatever that means) school lunches makes no mention of – food safety. The story cites a sample lunch that may now contain fresh lettuce and tomatoes in a wrap, rather than the canned or cooked variety of fruits and veggies. Fresh is great, but introduces an array of microbial food safety and supplier management issues that isn’t even mentioned. Sorta ironical.

 

Does it suck or not? USDA’s version of protect your baby and yourself from listeriosis

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture, eager to groove with the youtube generation but without the grossness that thrives online, released a video today highlighting the potential for certain foods to cause listeriosis in pregnant women.

I don’t know if it works so I asked Chapman. He said the video doesn’t spend enough time on deli meats, the food that risk assessments have shown was much riskier than others. He also said it’s not bad, but somewhat patronizing, but he’s also not a pregnant woman.

For which we are all grateful.

I asked a former pregnant woman, Amy, to look at the video. She said,

“The voices are crazy. I love the idea that she had her baby while they were filming.

“Why do they pick such a boring male narrator? Like I want to listen to him tell me about what not to eat.

“He sounds like he should be the voice of the Pork Bureau.”

These are anecdotal responses. I look forward to USDA releasing the results of their video evaluation research so taxpayers can be assured these attempts at video aren’t just wasting time and money.

No food safety in Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

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Does knowing your farmer make food safer?

Absolutely not.

Maybe if you ask the right questions, and get honest answers, but even then, only a maybe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new youtube vid has lots of stuff about local and regional, economics but no evidence of why local is better. And nothing about food safety

The ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department’s efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiatives.

To be fair, USDA did announce nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota to bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.

Leave it to the academics to ask for money to meet. Foods safety needs to be front and center of any food initiative.

And this was my farmer near Guelph, Jeff Wilson (above, right). He had outstanding food safety, long before others started talking about it.