Helena Bottemiller is a Washington, DC-based reporter covering food policy and politics for Food Safety News. Helena first delved into the world of food safety while writing her thesis on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles. At Food Safety News, she has covered Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and several high-profile food safety stories, including the half-billion Salmonella egg recall and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Helena has appeared on BBC World and been featured in USA Today; her work also appears on Civil Eats and Obama Foodorama and is widely cited by mainstream and niche media.
The Environmental Protection Agency missed a deadline this week to release part of an analysis on the public health impact of dioxins, a lapse that angered public health and environmental advocates.After many years of delays, the agency said in August it would complete the first part of the dioxin reassessment, which would have set a toxicological threshold for the first...
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) may be more prevalent in retail pork products than previously thought, according to a study published in the Public Library of Science's PLoS ONE in January.More than six percent of 395 pork samples, taken from 36 grocery stores in Iowa, Minnesota, and New Jersey, were contaminated with MRSA, which is significantly higher than previous studies. More...
Leading food industry groups are urging the Obama administration to adequately fund federal food safety oversight, instead of seeking new taxes or regulatory fees."We respectfully ask that you make securing adequate congressional funding for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food safety activities one of your highest priorities rather than proposing any new food taxes or regulatory fees on consumers...
Philip Derfler, deputy administrator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, touted the new proposed rule on poultry inspection last week at a Food and Drug Law Institute's conference.Under current policy, FSIS is responsible for examining all poultry carcasses for blemishes or visible defects before they are further processed. Under the proposed rule, the agency would...
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama said that while he's in favor of reforming outdated and unnecessary regulations, he won't be backing down on food or water safety. "I'm confident a farmer can contain a milk spill without a federal agency looking over his shoulder," said the President in an hour-long speech before Congress. "But I...
In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a California law on Monday that required the euthanization of downer livestock, to promote animal welfare and keep them out of the food supply. In 2009, California enacted a ban on selling or slaughtering downer, or lame animals unable to walk, in response to undercover footage showing animal handlers abusing cows...
The Humane Society of the United States and the United Egg Producers -- who, by all accounts, are strange bedfellows -- announced Monday strong support for H.R. 3798, the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012, which was introduced this week by Reps. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), and Jeff Denham (R-CA). United Egg Producers, which...
Part II of a conversation with Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on a variety of issues facing the agency. Q: The agency's getting a lot of heat, both from public health advocates and the media, over antibiotics in animal agriculture. This issue doesn't seem to be going anywhere, even with the cephalosporin...
A conversation with Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on putting the ambitious, one-year-old Food Safety Modernization Act into action. Q: While FDA seems to be making progress on FSMA, there have been a couple key missed deadlines: the produce safety rule, foreign supplier verification... What can we expect to see in the...
Just over a year ago, President Obama used 15 pens to sign the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law. The most sweeping update to U.S. food safety law in more than 70 years, FSMA is a huge undertaking for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and, not surprisingly, the agency is already behind on some major deadlines in...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is continuing its effort to reassure the public that Gulf seafood is safe, despite lingering concerns about the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "Gulf seafood is as safe to eat now as it was before the spill," wrote Deputy Commissioner for Foods Michael Taylor on the agency blog last week.Taylor described the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is continuing to test imported shipments of orange juice for the fungicide carbendazim before allowing them to enter commerce. Preliminary test results for three samples are negative, according to an agency spokesman."Nothing is being banned, just held while it is being tested," said FDA's Sebastian Cianci, when asked to clarify whether FDA was banning...
Following one of the deadliest U.S. outbreaks on record, the cantaloupe industry appears to be moving toward industry-imposed regulation to prevent another food-safety catastrophe and boost consumer confidence. Though a single farm in Colorado was the epicenter of the high-profile Listeria contamination last fall, California growers are calling for a statewide marketing safety agreement, according to reports out of an...
Congressman Ed Markey, D-MA -- who serves as Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee and is a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee -- is urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to finalize the long-delayed health assessment of dioxins. Citing the recent government data that showed air releases of dioxin rose 10 percent between 2009 and 2010,...
Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee are flagging problems with third-party inspections, which many growers and retailers rely on for food safety oversight, and urging federal officials to reform the audit system.Lawmakers sent a letter to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg Tuesday citing the "significant problems" the panel found during its investigation of the multi-state cantaloupe listeria...
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