Last year the Texas Legislature approved a bill to allow the sale of food made in uninspected and unlicensed home kitchens, but some now say the state's rules implementing the new law are unnecessarily burdensome and subvert the measure's intent.Rules for Senate Bill (SB) 81, which went into effect last Sept. 1, were not made public until Dec. 1 at...
Oklahomans who want a cottage-food law adopted in their state are going the direct democracy route with an on-line petition that has attracted almost 2,000 signers and continues to grow.A little more than one week ago, Tina Curtis put up the petition asking for support for getting Oklahoma's elected officials to come out for a measure that would allow the...
As early as next week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives will likely be deciding whether the "Live Free or Die" state should allow unlicensed "homestead" food and on-farm sales of raw milk.The quick action has left state regulators scrambling to get ahead of lawmakers who seem bent on removing government oversight of the sale of homemade food.The proposals are...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's new, groundbreaking non-O157 E. coli policy, which classifies six new strains of as adulterants and requires testing, will become effective 90 days later than originally planned, the Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Wednesday. The delay, which did not surprise industry insiders, will push back the routine sampling of the six additional STEC serogroups O26,...
The raw milk games are just getting underway in statehouses across America. Legislative sessions are annual opportunities to make changes in the crazy quilt that is raw milk regulation in this country, as the states all pursue their own unique courses when it comes to the sale of unpasteurized milk.On one side are those who say anyone can drink raw...
As Food Safety News continues to investigate the identity of 'Restaurant Chain A,' the "Mexican-style fast food chain" linked to a 10-state outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis infection in October and November 2011, the issue has received mounting attention from a variety of media outlets and blogs, including the Huffington Post and Marion Nestle at Food Politics. JoNel Aleccia of msnbc.com spoke...
County sheriffs and federal officials bickering over land, guns and water policies are as old as the West, but the Constitutional Sheriffs Convention, underway for the past three days in Las Vegas, has something new on the menu --- food safety regulation. "I made the decision that the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office was not going to be the milk police,"...
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...
The trucking industry is gearing up to invest in new technologies and tighten shipping procedures in order to meet the Obama Administration's new food safety regulations.In December of 2010, Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which mandated improvements across the food safety system. For the transportation industry, these changes include a requirement that the Department of Health and...
In an effort to lower childhood obesity rates - which have been climbing rapidly over the past 3 decades - the Obama Administration is raising the bar on school nutrition. With the help of First Lady Michelle Obama, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wednesday revealed a new set of regulations for school meals, marking the first overhaul of these standards...
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