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.
In response to nationwide concern among parents and school service providers about 'pink slime' being purchased by the national school lunch program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that next year it will give school districts the ability to choose whether they will serve the ammoniated beef product.The USDA said that while it believes all products it buys for...
Foodborne illness outbreaks linked to imported food appeared to rise between 2009 and 2010, according to a new analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday.CDC reported that half of the foods implicated in outbreaks were imported from "areas which previously had not been associated with outbreaks." The research was presented at the International Conference on Emerging...
U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, a conservative Republican from Wyoming, is starting to sound a lot like her colleague Rep. Rose DeLauro, a liberal Democrat from Connecticut -- at least when it comes to fixing the nation's fragmented food safety system.Citing a Government Accountability Office report on the issue, Rep. Lummis argued last week that federal food safety responsibilities should be...
Citing an increased incidence of foodborne illness outbreaks caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens, public health advocates are again ratcheting up pressure on Congress to limit routine, subtherapeutic antibiotic use in agriculture. At back to back briefings on Capitol Hill late last week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Center for a Livable Future presented a panel of...
Though researchers are familiar with pre-slaughter E. coli interventions such as probiotics, vaccines, certain chemicals and viruses that kill the bacteria, few manufacturers are seeking approval for these technologies. Government could do more to encourage innovation in this area, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Reducing contamination before cattle enter the slaughterhouse could save lives and dollars. According...
Unbeknownst to most consumers, many steaks sold in America are mechanically tenderized, a process that makes meat more tender but can transfer bacteria into the center of the steak. Though the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends consumers cook these non-intact steaks to a higher internal temperature to kill bacteria, they don't have to be labeled. That may be about to...
A proposal to reform poultry inspection that would shift quality and deflect oversight away from U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors toward the companies processing the birds has come under heavy criticism by Washington, DC-based Food & Water Watch. On Thursday, the debate spilled over into an agriculture appropriations hearing in the House. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is...
Why is it harder for a small grower to implement food safety standards? The long-running discussion over food safety as it applies to different types and sizes of farms continued Wednesday during Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on nutrition and local food. During the hearing, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) asked supermarket giant Walmart's Senior Director of Local Sourcing & Sustainable Agriculture,...
The United States took the first step Tuesday toward formally challenging India's longtime ban on U.S. poultry products before the World Trade Organization."Over the last few years, the United States has repeatedly asked India to justify its claim that a ban on poultry products from the United States is necessary," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement. "However, to...
Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan touched on the importance of food safety in the growing regional and local food movement during the U.S. Department of Agriculture Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food event at the White House on Monday. "No one gets a pass on food safety, in my mind, I don't care if you're the biggest farm in the...
Antibiotic resistance remains common among meat-borne pathogens, according to the annual National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System report released late last week.NARMS, which is coordinated between the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and some state laboratories, is meant to serve as a "reference point identifying and analyzing trends in antimicrobial resistance among these organisms." ...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week launched an interactive map showing USDA-supported projects helping local and regional food systems, including the recent focus on supporting small meat processors.In the launch, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, who takes the leading role on Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF), highlighted such projects as helping almost 4,500 farmers extend their growing...
Researchers have long suspected a link between the E. coli that causes human urinary tract infections and E. coli contamination in meat products, and new research gives more credence to the theory. A study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal found genetic similarities between E. coli from animals sampled at slaughterhouses and the E....
U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg Thursday warned of more outbreaks and import problems if food safety is not properly funded and defended a proposal to collect registration fees to help pay for oversight. During a House appropriations hearing on the FDA's budget, which is increasingly supplemented by fees aimed at drug makers, lawmakers questioned Hamburg about whether...
The number of food safety and plant health trade barriers plaguing U.S. agricultural exports is way up, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a congressional committee recently."In the last 10 years, the number of sanitary and phytosanitary barriers we have had to deal with has increased from roughly 650 to close to 1,500 last year," said Secretary Vilsack during a four...
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