At the request of Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-CT, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has returned to the problem of managing the risk of arsenic in rice. The GAO is an agency in the legislative branch of the federal government that provides auditing, evaluation and investigative services for Congress
Arsenic, a natural element in…
Editor’s note: U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, sent the below letter regarding so-called lab meat and other cell-cultured foods to Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States, on March 28.
Dear Mr. Dodaro:
I am writing to request that GAO investigate what regulatory framework, if any, exists for cell-cultured food products and how this…
A federal review of laboratories handling many of the most dangerous pathogens on the planet, including some that can be foodborne such as Brucella and bacterium that cause botulism poisoning, shows room for improvement.
The “high-containment laboratories” are overseen by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services via the Centers for Disease Control…
A new U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report for a handful of congressional leaders takes up less than five pages, but appear to include a smoking gun for produce regulations that have become too burdensome.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government unit that wrote Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing and Holding…
A computerized tool used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to assess the safety risk of food imported into the United States could be more effective, according to a recent analysis from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The tool is known as PREDICT and uses open source and other data to identify food shipments…
Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) have requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study whether creating a single food agency would increase efficiencies, reduce costs and improve safety. In January, Durbin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced bills to establish such a single food safety agency…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to do more to ensure that its foreign offices are keeping food imported to the U.S. safe, says a report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In 2010, GAO studied FDA’s foreign offices and found that they engaged in a variety of activities relating to food…
While more than half of foods tested for pesticides this year were found to have at least trace amounts of the chemicals, most amounts fell below “tolerance levels” set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to the annual report on pesticides released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency’s annual report, made in…
The federal government could be doing more to achieve the goals of the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and other food-safety efforts, according to a 46-page report published Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The amount of food-safety oversight reported by the federal government varies between the nation’s two major food-safety agencies,…
Government agencies in charge of monitoring food for pesticide residues must step up their testing programs, said the Government Accountability Office in a new report. While data collected by these agencies has shown low levels of pesticide residue violations in the past few years, shortcomings in sampling methods mean some residue violations may be going…
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending that the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) take action to reduce pathogen contamination on chicken and turkey products, make sure that agency food-safety standards are being met, and better assess whether on-farm practices are effective in reducing pathogens in live poultry. In a…
