Dan Flynn is a Denver-based writer and editor with more than ten years of food safety experience. As a public affairs professional, he worked with government and regulatory agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. His career as a journalist included working for newspapers throughout the West, from the Black Hills to Seattle. His on-scene reporting on the collapse of the Idaho’s Teton Dam and the suicide bombing at Washington State University’s Perham Hall was carried by newspapers around the world and was recognized both times regionally by the Associated Press for Best Reporting on a Deadline. Most of the disasters he attends these days involve food illnesses.
In 1864, when Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman conducted his famous March to the Sea, splitting George apart like a ripe peach, his troops lived totally off the bounty of the land.Sherman's Union army, marching without supplies, did not want for anything, while up north the Army of Virginia was experiencing disease and starvation as Gen. Robert E. Lee fought...
The Mexican-style fast food chain referred to only as "Restaurant A" in a report on a 10-state outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is Taco Bell, Food Safety News has learned.While suspected ever since the CDC's outbreak report was issued on January 19, confirmation that Taco Bell was central to the investigation comes...
County sheriffs and federal officials bickering over land, guns and water policies are as old as the West, but the Constitutional Sheriffs Convention, underway for the past three days in Las Vegas, has something new on the menu --- food safety regulation. "I made the decision that the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office was not going to be the milk police,"...
British meat-packing plants deemed to be a "cause for concern" will be named publicly under a policy adopted this month by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which is responsible for inspecting food processing in the UK.The decision to publish audit reports on the agency website is designed to eliminate the public mystery surrounding audits of British processing plants.But the move...
We can go back to talking amongst ourselves about the theory of a single food safety agency in the United States. But in reality, the idea is now dead.Let's review.On Jan. 13, President Obama announced he was asking Congress "to reinstate the authority that past presidents had, over decades, to reorganize the government."The President said his immediate goal was to...
Two executives of a family-owned Kansas meat company are charged in a six-count criminal indictment with processing chickens after USDA inspectors left for the day, selling them as if they were USDA-inspected, and then shipping the poultry across state lines.The 10-page indictment has plenty of detail about the criminal charges for the unusual violations, but does not contain any explanation...
After home bakers organized on Facebook and went to the state capitol bearing tasty treats Thursday, a Colorado House committee gave its unanimous support to a cottage food bill.If enacted, the bill would allow the sale of "nonpotentially hazardous" food from home kitchens.Cottage food advocates handed out homemade cookies decorated with the Colorado state seal at the Economic and Business...
The Obama Administration "is not 'confirming' food safety consolidation," the subscription news service The Hagstrom Report now says. The newsletter reports:"Although Jeff Zients, who is now White House Office of Management and Budget director, said recently that consolidation of food safety agencies would be one of those "addressed in subsequent, specific proposals," an OMB spokeswoman has told The Hagstrom Report...
A Watertown, MN man will make a full recovery from paralyzing rat lungworm disease acquired during his visit to Hawaii's Big Island last November and December, his doctors now say.Eric Reinert, 22, visited the Big Island's Puna District to learn about organic farming practices and was exposed to the dangerous rat lungworm disease, or eosinophilic meningitis, which is usually passed...
Last year's "food sovereignty" movement has returned in 2012 with a decidedly mean edge.New Hampshire is the second state where some lawmakers want to use their criminal code against state employees, producers and even federal officials in order to stop federal enforcement of food safety laws. Utah was the first.Unlike Utah, the proposed New Hampshire "Food Freedom Act," does not...
In a crisis communication training exercise a few years ago, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made "table top" emergency decisions about what to do if the agency became involved in such high-risk situations as the Virginia Tech shooting, a flu vaccine shortage, an Adenovirus outbreak, and an erroneous announcement that happened to involve Taco Bell.In that...
A Utah Senate bill would make it a class A misdemeanor for any person -- including state officials --- to help enforce federal regulations like those in the new federal Food Safety Modernization Act on agricultural products that do not leave the Beehive State.Conviction on a class A misdemeanor in Utah can result in a one-year sentence and a fine...
Food safety in Nebraska is based on the ultimate public-private partnership. Both the taxpayers and fee-paying food businesses share the freight. At the non-partisan Nebraska Unicameral, the time has come to raise fees on food businesses to keep the costs of operating the state's 14 regional inspection offices in balance. Nebraska also wants to avoid laying off any more food...
Ten days ago, we kicked over a hornet's nest by passing on a solid report suggesting the Obama Administration planned to use its newly sought "consolidation authority" to put all federal food safety functions under one roof.Most hearing about Obama wanting "consolidation authority" heard about how it would be used to merge the government's half dozen trade and business agencies...
Civil penalties totaling $4,250 for providing substandard housing to migrant workers are being imposed against Colorado cantaloupe grower Eric Jensen, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.Brothers Eric and Ryan Jensen are the owners of Jensen Farms, which last year produced and shipped a crop of Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupe that were contaminated with Listeria. It resulted...
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