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.
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...
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...
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...
At some date soon in February or March, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty may follow the tradition of putting on new shoes and walking into the House of Commons with a proposed new federal budget.Ever since it received the report of an independent inquiry into the deadly 2008 Listeria outbreak that was traced back to Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto,...
New Jersey teetered on the brink of allowing commercial raw milk sales last year, but it did not happen.Assembly Bill 743, setting up a permit system and allowing the commercial sale of raw milk, passed New Jersey's lower house on a 71-6 vote (with one abstention) way back in March, 2011. A743 was then sent to the Senate Economic Growth...
For everyone who went through the controversies surrounding passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act in the United States, what is happening now in New Zealand is going to sound very familiar.New Zealand has introduced a food safety bill updating the nation's Food Act of 1981. The food safety reforms have broad-based support, including from such backers as Robert Bradley...
Four years ago when the organization long equated with the vegan lifestyle said it would give $1 million to any scientist who could make chicken in a laboratory, there were some willing to bet no one would meet the group's challenge.Now with that deadline fast approaching, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) may indeed have to pay the reward....
One out of six Americans will get sick this year from foodborne illnesses, says a new television commercial.And 3,000 will die, according to a radio spot.Many in the food-safety community know these facts, but lots of people do not.Who is spreading this news?None other than the Food Safe Families campaign, a project of the Ad Council and USDA's Food Safety...
A single federal food safety agency, long sought by many advocates, will happen if Congress grants the Obama Administration authority to reorganize the government, according to the subscription news service The Hagstrom Report.In its Friday edition, The Hagstrom Report said Office of Management and Budget Director for Management, Jeff Zients, said that if Congress grants Obama the power to consolidate...
The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce might have substituted a photo for its brief investigation report, released Tuesday, on the outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infection from contaminated cantaloupes at Colorado's Jensen Farms.That imaginary photograph would have brothers Eric and Ryan Jensen from Jensen Farms; Will Steele and Amy Gates, the CEO and executive vice president of Frontera Produce,...
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