FSMA Revisions seek to better balance organic and conventional farmer interests

 

The FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rule revisions have gained the Organic Trade Association (OTA)'s approval. The revisions strive to respect organic methods of farming while keeping the goal of increasing contamination prevention as much as possible.

Lydia Zuraw summarized the changes made in her Food Safety News article of September 19th:

"Some of the most technical challenges to implementing the Act involve the produce safety rule. In the new language,
- FDA changes the microbial standard for water that is directly applied during the growing of produce,
-proposes a tiered and more targeted approach to testing each source of untreated water,
-removes the nine-month interval for between application of raw manure and harvest of a crop (deferring a decision on an appropriate interval until it conducts more research),
-eliminates the 45-day minimum application interval for compost, and
-redefines a “farm” so that farms that pack or hold food from neighboring farms won’t be subject to both the produce rule and the preventive controls for human food rules."
 
Taking a closer look at a couple of these, this means compost use is being encouraged (since farmers can apply compost whenever they like and not worry that it's too close to harvesting time) and though raw manure use is not as favored (because, you know, fecal waste and all that), the FDA is clearly making a huge effort to recognize the smelly goodness of "“untreated biological soil amendments of animal origin” and regulate its usage in a rational, respectful way.

The elimination of the nine-month interval between manure application and harvesting makes sense because otherwise organic farmers cannot rotate crops (presumably calling for different growth and harvesting intervals than 9 months) and must fall in line to the conventional routine of planting the same thing in the same spot.

Ironically, the biodiversity that crop rotation encourages can increase crop yield in the long run by improving soil nutrient levels and resistance to erosion, weeds and insects. Presumably this is because no one insect or weed "scavenger" population is allowed to thrive for too long since their meal keeps changing...I just made that up, but maybe?

For the full Act text, click here

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
photo credit: http://www.123rf.com/photo_14295589_farmer-works-with-manure-at-farm.html

Tomatoes No Cash Crop

                                     


Tomato growers trying to recoup their massive lost profits from an ultimately inaccurate Salmonella source diagnosis by the FDA lost their case today; food safety warnings were NOT ruled to be government takings and therefore the FDA is not responsible for the dramatic dip in tomato sales in 2008 (due to the FDA's accusation that tomatoes were to blame. It turned out it was peppers.)

As near to impossible as it is to pinpoint the source of food borne illness, today's ruling makes it clear that at least as far as the FDA's work is concerned, people matter more than profits. Today's ruling protects the FDA's legitimate attempts to investigate food borne illness and its origins, as well as squashing any tomato grower's illusions of grandeur.

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
photo credit: licensing.pixels.com

Could a label help find E.coli before your stomach does?

 Research is well underway in Alberta, Canada, to develop a "smart label" that can sense the presence of certain bacteria, including infamous E.coli, in a food package, and change color to warn consumers and producers alike.

So suddenly your meat package would turn from blue to white or get all cloudy and you'd know that you've just barely missed ingesting E.coli, Listeria or Salmonella. Cool, huh?
So two small problems: this is being done in Canada, not the States (yet), and the scientists at University of Alberta still need to do more testing, get government approvals and move on from the lab to product manufacturing. But they're on the right track.

Alberta has had a host of food illness outbreaks recently, E.coli and Salmonella carried by pork, sprouts and chia seeds being the latest. We here in the US have had our share of recent food safety failures: children on both the West coast are dying from E.coli infection complications. And the thing is, it's really hard to figure out where it came from. You basically have to let it get really widespread to be able to confirm the source. Great. Good plan.

So the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency decided to give Dominic Sauvageau, a chemical engineer and researcher in biotechnology, and his team of researchers $220,000 to develop a way to improve the situation. "Smart labels" is their hopeful answer. Not only will this alert consumers should contaminated food get that far in the distribution process, but the technology would also allow food processors to identify weak links in their procedures just by seeing the labels change color at a certain point in the process.

“If there’s a sensitive step in food processing, this technology can help identify exactly where is the sensitive part of the process,” Sauvageau said. “The ideal situation is to never get to the point where you need a recall.”

Wouldn't that be nice.

In case you're wondering how to avoid contamination for now and not freak out about eating your meat and vegetables: here is what the Mayo Clinic advises you to do (I'd listen, they seem to know what they're doing, right?).

So hopefully some day soon we'll have not just Canadian coins popping up across the border, but smarter food labels as well, and optimistically far fewer horrendous headlines about children dying from eating their vegetables.

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
Photo credit: http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1910584-stock-footage-student-medical-technican-working-with-a-microscope-and-test-tubes-in-laboratory.html

Taking News on Sodium with a Grain of Salt

                                 

A recent New England Journal of Medicine study reconfirmed the notion that a diet high in salt increases rates of heart attacks, heart failures and strokes. But "high in salt" was defined as more than 7 grams of sodium a day (just as a reference, our bodies need only about 200 milligrams of sodium a day.) How on earth do people manage to ingest that much sodium?!
Clearly, it's not just from adding more than a generous pinch of salt to their home-cooked meals for taste. As As a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital points out, salt adds up through a variety of food choices, including:

-fast foods (yes, fries)
-“convenience foods” like frozen dinners or snacks
-canned food (except canned fruit)
-condiments such as ketchup and pickles
-cheese
-soup

I'm guessing bacon would count, too.

But does that mean  that most of us need to avoid eating delicious French cheese and French fries? Say it ain't so!

It ain't so. As with most things, moderation is the key and avoiding extremes is the ticket.

The very same New England study that reconfirmed the "lots of salt is bad" result also examined subjects on really low sodium diets (less that 3 grams per day). And guess what. When compared with those who consumed 3-6 grams per day (a moderate amount of sodium), people who consumed less than 3 grams of sodium per day had an even higher risk of death or cardiovascular incidents than those who consumed more than 7 grams per day.

So as usual, let's not freak out and avoid salt entirely; let's also not order supersize fries, either. Instead, let's enjoy our food and strive to make well-educated and rational food choices. Now where's that bacon?


Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
Photo credit: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/image/stock-photo-pile-of-french-fries-potato-wedges-with-herbs/476147039