The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) should carry on with its work to reduce pathogens in meat and poultry, but first, the agency needs to improve documentation, add some timelines to its tasks and check on the effectiveness of on-farm practices.
Those three new recommendations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the auditing,…
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) are still waiting for answers to animal antibiotics questions posed eight months ago. The senators originally wrote to the co-chairs of the Interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in December 2014 wanting to know about how the task force plans to address issues…
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…
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) are asking Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to finalize USDA’s Salmonella and Campylobacter performance standards as soon as possible. In January, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) proposed changes to the Salmonella and Campylobacter Verification Testing Program created brand-new standards for Salmonella and Campylobacter…
After FRONTLINE’s documentary on Salmonella in poultry aired Tuesday night on PBS, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) officially introduced legislation to give the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandatory recall authority over contaminated meat and poultry. Gillibrand discussed her Meat and Poultry Recall Notification Act with reporters in February, saying that, if passed, the bill would…
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has once again proposed a law that would give the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) the ability that it does not believe it already has to recall meat tainted with the pathogenic Salmonella bacteria. The law, in essence, would prompt FSIS to label Salmonella for…
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is proposing legislation that would require recalls of meat and poultry contaminated with pathogens. “As it stands now, if foods like ground beef and sliced turkey are found to be unsafe, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lacks the authority to issue a mandatory recall,” Gillibrand said. “As a result, it becomes…
Food Safety News wrote a lot about antibiotic resistance this year — particularly the debate surrounding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) plan to phase out the use of certain antibiotics in food animals, introduced in December 2013, and conversations sparked by the 16-month outbreak of multi-drug-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg linked to Foster Farms-brand chicken that…
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a letter Tuesday to Secretaries Chuck Hagel, Tom Vilsack and Sylvia Burwell, co-chairs of the newly formed Interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, to ask how this task force will address gaps in how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently…
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) expressed her support Thursday for additional funding for implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). In a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, Gillibrand asked that they allocate an additional $50 million for fiscal year 2015 for FSMA. The request was in support of a letter released Monday by the Pew…
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are calling on the Food and Drug Administration to step up animal antibiotic tracking. Specifically, they want the agency to propose a rule to improve collection of data on antibiotic use and resistance. “We applaud your agency’s recent step to issue…
