California's Anti-Antibiotics Bill a No-Go: Is voluntary goodwill enough?

CA Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the state's bill attempting to ban the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and require a veterinarian prescription for a livestock antibiotic. This would mean that animal producers couldn't introduce antibiotics into their animals' environment in any capacity without a "veterinarty-client-patient relationship"; without it, administering antibiotics would become criminal activity under this bill.

Not too surprisingly, that goal didn't get the governor's approval. And from a constitutional law perspective, it's not hard to see why: there are less restrictive ways to regulate food practices and protect public welfare. As a prime example, the voluntary Federal Drug Administration standard that phases-out antibiotic use for growth promotion is seemingly doing a fairly effective job of encouraging food producers to stop antibiotic use on their own. “This action promotes the judicious use of important antimicrobials, which protects public health and, at the same time, ensures that sick and at-risk animals receive the therapy they need,” says CVM Director Bernadette Dunham, DVM, Ph.D. “We realize that these steps represent changes for veterinarians and animal producers, and we have been working to make this transition as seamless as possible.”

Recently, Perdue and Tyson have taken a first step in making the transition to antibiotic-free food production. But although it is definitely in the right direction, this step needs to be looked at more closely. Both companies announced they were no longer going to use antibiotics used by humans in their chicken hatcheries. This technically means that there is no risk of overexposure on our part to antibiotics we use to get better, which means we won't become prematurely immune to their beneficial effects.
Perdue also does not feed its chickens any antibiotics for growth promotion purposes; the same cannot be said for Tyson yet.

The misleading thing about chicken and antibiotics is that as much as these sorts of actions should be encouraged, they are not as meaningful as they would be in the beef and pork industries. This is because all chicken is “antibiotic-free” in the sense that no antibiotic residues are present in the meat due to the withdrawal periods and other precautions required by the government and observed by the chicken companies, according to the National Chicken Council.

So interestingly, this means that antibiotic use in chickens is primarily an animal welfare issue; humans are not theoretically much at risk due to the withdrawal period. But these companies are changing their policies, since we the consumers are getting more and more grossed out by the thought of the Little Red Hen being injected with antimicrobial drugs just so we can have bigger animals and cheap meat.
When will Bessie the Cow and Percy Pig be as ethically treated across the board?

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

D.C. Circuit Court Allows USDA Country of Origin Labels for Meat

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations that mandate country of origin labels on meat. The case arose when a group of trade organizations, including the American Meat Institute, representing collectively "big meat," sued in opposition of the regulations.

The regulations require meat packaging (not including packaged hamburger) to include a label listing the meat's country of origin. The regulations further require that labels list all countries where processing of the meat took place. If, for example, a cow was born in Canada, but raised and processed in the United States, the regulations require the label state "born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States." Industry opposed the measure, at least in part, because the regulation will force costly changes in the processing stage. Industry practices today allow meats from different countries to mix together during processing. The regulations, thus, make it difficult for industry to maintain business as usual. The court did not find the industry perspective convincing, while also noting increasing consumer demand for more transparency in food production methods. The court also cited food safety concerns regarding co-mingling of meat from different sources as a basis for its decision.

The decision further deals a blow to commercial speech advocates, and provides a win for consumer and public health advocates. In the decision, the court refused to extend commercial speech protection to include industry claims that country of origin labeling infringed freedom of speech.

Neil Pederson, J.D. expected 2015, William Mitchell College of Law.

Photo Credit: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/109091

FDA in No Rush to Heighten Regulations on Antibiotics in Animal Feed

The Second Circuit recently held that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have to take action to regulate antibiotics in livestock feed. The decision reverses a lower court decision, which mandated the FDA proceed with hearings to determine whether to withdraw approval of the use of penicillin and tetracyclines as a ingredient in feed. The Second Circuit decision also reversed the lower courts holding that the FDA actions when it denied two petitions demanding hearings on the matter were arbitrary and capricious.

The FDA approved the use of penicillin and tetracyclines, both antibiotics, in animal feed in 1977. Although expressing some concern about the negative impact of that use--especially in regard to the potential impact of its widespread use on creating antibiotic resistant bacteria that could transfer to bacteria affecting humans-- the FDA decided not to take action. Instead, the FDA decided to await further studies.

Neil Pederson, J.D. expected 2015, William Mitchell College of Law.

Photo Credit: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/780707.