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.
An increasing portion of the food on our plate is coming from beyond our borders, but how do we know that it's safe? A new study by the Institute of Medicine looks at the "daunting" task of ensuring safe food across the globe and comes to the conclusion that it's going to take lot more than random, infrequent inspections.The flood of...
Congressman Steve King (R-IA) and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad are pushing for a congressional probe into what many in the meat industry are calling a "smear campaign" against Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), a formerly obscure component commonly used in ground beef now known to the public as "pink slime." King has asked Frank Lucas (R-OK), chairman of the House...
Over the past several weeks, thousands of articles, blog posts, tweets and even Facebook statuses have weighed in on the debate over Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), now commonly known as "pink slime." One place you won't find any mention of the product, however, is on a ground beef label -- or any meat label, for that matter. That may...
Around 100 poultry inspectors gathered outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday, right under Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's window, to protest a proposal to expand an inspection system that shifts federal inspectors away from inspecting for quality defects and allows slaughter lines to speed up. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service is responsible for examining all poultry carcasses...
Visceral lesions, or visible signs of infection or organ damage, can help predict Salmonella contamination on pig carcasses, according to new research published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research this month. Researchers at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine found that Salmonella contamination was 90 percent more likely to occur in carcasses with lesions that were visibly identifiable,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday denied a petition seeking to ban bisphenol-A, commonly known as BPA, from food and beverage packaging, but the agency said it continues to support research examining the safety of the chemical. BPA has been used for decades in a broad range of food and beverage containers, including sippy cups, cans and baby...
Three governors, among them recent presidential candidate Rick Perry of Texas, two lieutenant governors, and the Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture all went to bat for Beef Products Inc. in a press conference in South Sioux City, Nebraska Thursday to assure consumers that Lean Finely Textured Beef, now widely known as "pink slime," is...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is set to announce this week whether it will ban bisphenol A, a controversial chemical commonly known as BPA, in food and beverage packaging. The deadline, this Saturday, was set as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) against FDA. The group petitioned FDA three years...
Responding to a dramatic drop in consumer demand, Beef Products Inc, the nation's leading maker of ammoniated beef now widely known as "pink slime," announced it is suspending production at three plants. The suspended plants account for approximately 70 percent of the company's capacity to produce Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB) treated with ammonium hydroxide.LFTB is essentially low-cost filler made...
Though food regulatory issues tend to fall behind top-of-mind policy concerns -- such as the overall health of the economy, unemployment, ongoing war in the Middle East, and the price of gas -- on the campaign trail, the GOP presidential candidates have given hints about where they stand. As this primary season continues to draw out, we thought our readers...
Responding to widespread consumer concern, the nation's second and third largest grocery chains, Safeway and SuperValu, will stop selling Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), otherwise known as 'pink slime,' ABC World News reported Wednesday.Safeway said "considerable consumer concern" led to its decision to drop the product, even though the company and the the U.S. Department of Agriculture insist the product...
Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service could face cuts under a new budget proposal put out by House Republicans on Tuesday.Though the budget outline, released by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), does not contain specific program cuts, the document seeks broad reductions in both agriculture and health spending...
Part II of a conversation with our nation's highest ranking food safety official, Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Q: The agency's decision to declare six non-O157 STECs adulterants was a big development. Now you've been petitioned to declare certain strains of drug-resistant Salmonella adulterants - can we expect a response on that...
A conversation with our nation's highest ranking food safety official, Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on the agency's landmark new policy on non-O157 STECs. Q: Can you give us a little bit of the background - some of the back story or detail that we maybe haven't heard - on how...
Just weeks after launching an advertising campaign focused on food and quality safety in China, McDonalds is under fire for local food safety violations. State-run China Central Television accused the company of selling chicken wings more than an hour and a half after they were cooked, which is about an hour past the company's self-imposed rule. The report also said...
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