Posts tagged as food safety

Rat hair in our hamburger. Water that’s not inspected. How can you sell tainted food and water to the American people? By cutting food and water protections from the federal budget. Don’t let Washington cut food and water safety protections. Take action at www.foodandwaterwatch.org, now.

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Food & Water Watch now proudly unveils the latest version of our Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory-farmed animals across the country.

It’s called the food “industry” for a reason. If you’ve seen Food Inc., you understand why. In that film, and here at Food & Water Watch, some careful analysis reveals the massive network of production and distribution that has become our food system. Thanks to advertising, marketing and fancy packaging, the images we create for ourselves of the places where our food comes from are often in direct contrast to the reality of where most of it is produced. Much of the time, we may be thinking farm, but we’re really getting factory. Read more…

Do you care where your seafood comes from? The National Fisheries Institute, a trade organization for the seafood import industry, thinks you don't.

The customer is always right. But is the customer always informed? Every day, money is made in this country based on the premise that most consumers don’t care about information pertaining to the products they buy. The imported seafood industry banks on it. Read more…

Today, as we await the results of elections that once again reflect the stark contrast between the ideologies of the Democratic and Republican parties, one issue has inspired bipartisan cooperation. Even in the face of midterm elections, both sides of the aisle have managed to set aside their differences to address a critical issue facing consumers. Democrats and Republicans alike are reminding the FDA that the public is not happy with their haphazard consideration of whether to approve genetically-engineered salmon — the first ever GE animal — for public consumption. Read more…

U.S. catfish farmers have been doing something almost unprecedented in the annals of the food industry — they have been asking for more regulation. In case you’re unsure of how serious they are, the Catfish Farmers of America launched a nationally televised ad campaign that asks President Obama to implement a new USDA program to inspect all catfish sold in the U.S. Read more…

Maybe we haven’t learned anything from the Great Egg Recall of 2010; at least not enough–not yet. The egg farm mentioned in William Neuman’s New York Times article, and many farms like it, try to adjust their large-scale models of production to address unhygienic conditions and other problems that arise from being so big.

The factory farm model confines thousands of animals into a closed environment that is condusive to the spread of diseases like E. coli and salmonella.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit overruled part of an Ohio labeling ban. The ban would have prevented producers from labeling their milk as "artificial hormone-free."

Last week, Ohio’s Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals re-instituted the right of dairy processors to label their products as “rbGH-free,” “rbST-free,” or “artificial hormone free,” if their cows aren’t treated with those substances. The ruling overturned a statewide ban —the most restrictive milk regulation in the U.S. — that prevented dairy processors from identifying their products as artificial hormone-free. Read more…

Food & Water Watch has been trying for months to get Brazilian meat products removed from American shelves due to systemic problems with their food safety system. On September 13, they found yet another reason to try again: USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced another recall of Brazilian meat products. A meatpacking plant that had been cited for excessive animal drug residues —three recalls to be exact — shipped 258,000 pounds of beef to the U.S. This plant was supposed to be blacklisted by our import inspectors, but its beef reached our food system anyway.

Brazil’s meat products should be removed from American shelves due to systemic problems with their food safety system. Beef from meatpacking plants that should be blacklisted by our import inspectors could be finding its way to our food system anyway.

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CNN's Brian Todd interviews our own Patty Lovera, food director, about how food contamination—like the Wright Egg salmonella outbreak—can spread so quickly. None of the eggs in the background were affected by the recall.

The Wright County Egg recall has continued to raise interesting questions about food safety issues across our industrial food system. Various news stations have been contacting our offices for the past week to ask how food contamination can spread so quickly across the country. CNN’s Brian Todd asked our food director, Patty Lovera, to meet him at a grocery store just outside of downtown Washington, D.C., to discuss the recall (we’ll provide the link as soon as the story airs), so I tagged along. Read more…

Investigations into a multi-state outbreak of salmonella have triggered a major recall of eggs involving 17 states and 380 million eggs—that's one bad egg per person in the United States.

By now, many of us have developed an unnatural but necessary fear of French toast, cake, omelets, egg salad sandwiches and more. Investigations into a multi-state outbreak of salmonella have triggered a major recall of eggs involving 17 states and 380 million eggs (one egg per person in the United States, plus several omelets), and those numbers could continue to grow. The affected eggs were packaged as far back as mid-May—an entire season ago. Read more…