Food Safety NewsDan 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.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is getting an extra $100 million to improve food inspection capacity over the next five years. But the union president representing CFIA employees says the agency's 2011-12 budget is also being cut by $30 million.The $100 million initiative will enable Canada's federal government to implement all the remaining recommendations of the Weatherill Report, the independent...
We've been asking a lot of questions about radiation during the past two weeks because there is a lot of interest in the subject. This past week we've seen the United States, through the Food and Drug Administration, and other countries halt food shipments from some areas of Japan. The areas put off-limit surround the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.We've...
The anhydrous ammonia leak Wednesday at the JBS pork plant in the Butchertown neighborhood east of Louisville's downtown was called "an extremely scary industrial accident" by a local resident leader who plans to meet with Mayor Greg Fischer on Saturday.About 700 JBS employees were forced to flee from the pork slaughterhouse when alarms went off at 12:24 and 12:31 p.m....
On one of its websites, Jakarta's P.T. Tuna Permata Rezeki says it runs a "strict HACCP compliance factory."That's not exactly what a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection found at the Indonesian seafood processing facility last Oct. 21 and 22.Instead, the FDA said it found "deviations" from the Seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point regulations that must be...
Those leafy greens from California filling America's salad bowls are safe to eat, so stop worrying about this radiation from Japan business--OK?That pretty much says it. At the Irvine-based Western Growers and Produce Marketing Association, spokeswoman Wendy Fink-Weber says there is "no threat" to California produce from radiation in Japan.She can point to the California Department of Public Health, with...
Japanese milk and spinach just do not factor much in the U.S. food supply, but what about radioactive fish?Five billion pounds of seafood are imported annually to the U.S. without much inspection.But we should not worry for two reasons about Japan's fish exports (mostly Pacific saury, chum salmon, mackerel, tuna, and scallops), U.S. government agencies say. First, while there are...
On March 11 President Obama expressed his "deepest condolences" to the Japanese people for that day's earthquake and tsunami. Later the same day he announced that he'd dispatched FEMA to Hawaii and other states and territories that might be impacted by coastal waves. Then the president went six days before saying anything about growing radiation risk from Japan.He did say...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says a Washington state dairy farm gave a false guaranty to a buyer that all animals it was providing for sale or processing were handled in a manner to prevent buildups of drug residues.Federal law prohibits providing a false guaranty.After providing the signed guaranty, Azevedo and Sons Dairy Inc., located near Othello, WA, sold...
If you go picking dandelions in the vicinity of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, you probably do not want to eat them.But just as reports of a "China Syndrome" meltdown at Fukushima were premature, so too might be reports of Japan's next disaster being the nuking of its food supply.It is true that Japan has found radioactive iodine in...
This weekend finds me on light duty, taking in some spring training games in the Phoenix area. The main reason I had to come down was to see Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, the new $120-million spring training Mecca built by the Pima and Maricopa Indians for the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks. Both teams moved over to this...
Seafood processors in California, North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana are recent recipients of warning letters from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for violations found during inspections.FDA released the warnings letters, which datie back to Dec. 28, this week.The four warning letters involve failure by the seafood processors to adhere to seafood Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)...
Baltimore's Goetze's Candy is making a nutritional claim it cannot back up, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration charged in a March 4 warning letter to the company.Those delectable Goetz's Caramel Cream Double Chocolates in the 9-ounce package should not make the claim on the label that they are "Fortified With Calcium," FDA said."The phrase 'Fortified With Calcium' is a...
Michigan's Amting Dairy Farm -- located at Marshall near the Intersection of Interstates 69 and 94 -- has a mid-sized herd of dairy cows and is a fairly typical for the Wolverine State.Also becoming fairly typical is how Amting fared in a recent inspection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Investigators found Amting holds "animals under conditions that...
Maybe it was a poor choice of words, but it was an honest expression from top field management of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Barbara Cassens, FDA's district director in San Francisco, was asked about accreditation for third-party auditors while participating in a panel at a recent Produce Marketing Association gathering.According to a report by The Packer, which covers...
The food industry is telling Congress it is all for food safety, it just does not want to pay for it.No less than 17 food industry organizations signed on to that message, which came in the form of a letter to the congressmen in charge of the budget for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."Imposing new fees on food facilities...
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