President Donald J. Trump wants to consolidate federal food safety under a single agency housed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
President Barack Obama also wanted to consolidate food safety, only he preferred housing it in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Food and Drug Administration.
Obama failed because Congress…
Ten Democrats who are members of the Congressional Food Safety Caucus are asking President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to get someone named as USDA’s Under Secretary for Food Safety.
In April 2017 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, left, sat at the right hand of President Donald J.…
The USDA is today publishing a notice in the Federal Register to further delay and reconsider new mandates for handling and transporting livestock and providing avian “living conditions” for poultry raised as organic food.
Without the action, the new requirements under the National Organic Program would have taken effect today. Meat and poultry products labeled…
There’s no food safety argument to be made for cage-free eggs versus those from chickens in other types of housing, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Nor are cage-free eggs more nutritious.
In what animal activists see as a defeat, a three-judge appeals panel for the 9th Circuit ruled on…
They say that confession is good for the soul, so here goes. My confession is that I find most all of the peripheral food issues around food safety pretty boring. I was hoping Congress would take more of them off the table in the $1.1-trillion omnibus spending bill it passed on Friday. Just for the…
Reggie Love, the former walk-on basketball player at Duke University who went on to become team captain, is out with a new book Feb. 3 called “Power Forward: My Presidential Education” that relates some of his experiences as President Obama’s long-time traveling companion and “body man.” I did not have an opportunity to read the…
How did the media, our professional associates in corporate and government information, Maine Governor Paul R. LePage, Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture Ben Brancel, Sheldon Lavin, POTUS (the president of the United States), and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg end up on the Food Safety News 2014 naughty list? 
It’s complicated. Make yourself an eggnog and sit…
Brian Ronholm is currently the acting under secretary for food safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Before going over to USDA, Ronholm was an appropriations staffer for liberal Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). DeLauro, who fires critical press releases at food regulators like my fourth-grade class did with spitballs, certainly has not held back on…
President Barack Obama signed the Agriculture Act of 2014 – better known as the farm bill – into law on Friday at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In his speech before the signing, Obama called the long-awaited bill a “Swiss Army knife” that acts as a jobs bill, innovation bill, infrastructure bill, research bill…
Today the United States celebrates its 57th presidential inauguration, kicking off President Barack Obama’s second term. Four years ago, a much younger-looking Obama was actually sworn into office amidst a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that would ultimately be linked to 700 illnesses and 9 deaths and lead to one of the largest product recalls in history.…
I wrote a few imaginary New Year’s resolutions for some of our newsmakers that we haven’t gotten around to publishing until now. As the great Willie Nelson would say: “Funny how time slips away.”
Truth be told, some of my colleagues thought I was being too harsh on the government this year. I don’t think…
