Food Safety NewsHelena 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 and her work is widely cited by mainstream and niche media. She tweets about food and agriculture policy at @hbottemiller.
A leading United Nations human rights official expressed concern Thursday over China's treatment of food safety activists.Olivier De Schuttter, the United Nations' Human Rights Council's independent expert on the right to food, said in a news conference that he was worried about societal and governmental intimidation of activists.Citing the charges against Zhao Lianhai, a father-turned-food safety activist after his son...
Ending out the anything-but-lame duck session, President Obama signed several bills into law on Wednesday, but the sweeping food safety bill approved by Congress Tuesday was not among them. The bill will likely not be signed into law until the President returns in early 2011 from a holiday vacation with his family in Hawaii.The new food safety law will give...
Chinese media let another food scandal out of the bag last week. This time the health culprit is popular hotpot dishes that are often tainted with harmful chemical additives, according to China's Global Times. "Eighty percent of hotpots served at (restaurants) contain such chemical additives," Wang, a chef who recently quit from a hotpot restaurant over his guilt, told the...
In the wake of several high-profile food safety scandals, China's top legislature is considering amending its criminal code to stiffen the penalties for food safety crimes. The amendment would allow public servants "responsible for supervising and managing food safety" to face up to 10 years in jail for "dereliction of duty or abuse of power" in a severe foods safety...
Ending a dramatic months-long legislative limbo, the House approved major food safety legislation 215-144 Tuesday. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, the first significant reform since 1938 of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's oversight of the food supply, is expected to be signed by President Obama before Christmas. The bill survived a near-fatal constitutional snafu, filibuster threats, fierce debate...
The House is expected to approve major food safety legislation today. Though many on Capitol Hill pronounced the bill dead last week, the measure bounced back to life over the weekend when the Senate unanimously--and quite unexpectedly-- advanced the beleaguered bill late Sunday night. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which would, for the first time in several decades, update...
Saturday morning update: Asked about the status of the food safety bill during a morning press conference covered by C-Span, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said: "The good news is it is not dead, the conversation is still alive on the floor of the Senate today."Durbin said he is hopeful the measure can be included in "the wrap up" of the...
The National Pork Producers Coalition is pushing back against claims that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's first ever estimate on antibiotics sold for animal agriculture is evidence of overuse. "Pork producers use antibiotics responsibly, under the direction of a veterinarian, to protect public health and the health of their animals and to produce safe food," said Howard Hill, DVM, who serves...
Wednesday's release of the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates on foodborne illness in the U.S., which are significantly lower than the oft-cited decade-old estimates, left many in the food policy community wondering about the timing of the report.Just two weeks ago, lawmakers were citing the now-obsolete 1999 estimates, as the House and Senate debated the pending food...
Pending food safety legislation hit a serious snag late Thursday as Senate Democrats abandoned their effort to fight for an all-encompassing provision to fund the government through September. The fate of the food safety legislation, which was attached to both the House and Senate versions of wide-ranging spending bills, would be the first significant reform of food safety laws in...
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) Wednesday reintroduced the Single Food Safety Agency Act of 2010, a bill that would create a single federal agency to oversee the nation's food supply, an effort to consolidate responsibilities that now belong to a dozen different federal agencies. DeLauro, who chairs the committee that oversees the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a new, lower estimate of the overall public health burden of foodborne illness in the United States. CDC now says food poisoning sickens 1 in 6 Americans each year, not 1 in 4 as the agency had estimated in 1999. According to the new estimates announced Wednesday, about 48 million fall...
The Senate took a key vote on a high profile deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts Monday, a move that could clear the way for the food safety bill to be considered later this week.The food safety bill, which stalled in the Senate after the House approved a similar bill in July 2009 and ultimately passed the upper chamber...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first time released an estimate on the amount of antibiotics sold for use in domestic food animal production, a move that comes as the agency aims to curb the growth in antibiotic resistance. The agency estimates that, in 2009, there were just shy of 29 million pounds sold for use in animal...
Today President Obama will sign the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law during a special signing ceremony at a local Washington, D.C. school. The bill, which reauthorizes many federal nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program, is a critical part of First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation."It's a great day for...
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