Food safety

More than half of the country’s adults support a blanket ban on junk food in schools, according to a national survey conducted this month.

Fifty-two percent of adults said they would prohibit soft drinks and sugary snacks in schools, the Rasmussen poll found, while 40 percent of those surveyed said that kids should continue to have access to those foods.

The poll arrives as healthcare experts and children advocates are warning of the cost and health concerns associated with the country’s growing obesity epidemic. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of the growth in healthcare costs is due to the increase in obesity over the last 15 years, according to Ken Thorpe, executive director of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease. Read more...

Sen. Feinstein should stop her “obstruction” and allow a food safety bill to reach the Senate floor, Rep. Dingell said Monday.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) wants to curb the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, the first House Republican to take that stance. He has so far stopped short of endorsing a Democratic bill that would mandate such restrictions, however.

"For decades, doctors have known that the widespread use of antibiotics speeds the development of bacterial mutation and antimicrobial resistance," Murphy said Wednesday at an Energy and Commerce Health panel hearing on antibiotic use in agriculture, the third in a series of hearings on antibiotic resistance.

Murphy, a former child psychologist with a strong interest in healthcare issues, pointed to the medical community's call for a "significant reduction" in the amount of antibiotics used in animal agriculture. But the congressman's district is also home to many rural farmers and pharmaceutical groups such as GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, which oppose strict restrictions.

Those competing interests leave in question whether Murphy will become the first Republican to endorse the "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act" introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) in March 2009. The bill would phase out the non-therapeutic use of specific classes of antibiotics in food-producing animals, while permitting their continued therapeutic use in sick animals. It has 113 co-sponsors.

A House panel on Thursday easily cleared the way for a lower-chamber vote on legislation to strengthen and expand child nutrition programs. The $8 billion tab, however, has yet to be covered, leaving supporters with the unenviable task of finding significant offsets before the bill can hit the floor.

Sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act would create new national meal programs targeting low-income children; expand existing programs to benefit more at-risk children; streamline enrollment to ensure eligible children are receiving due help; and bolster protections against food contamination in schools.

The benefits, Miller said, are three-fold. They feed hungry children; they reduce childhood obesity, saving money down the line; and they protect children from the dangers of foodborne illness.  

“If we allow more children to go hungry by not taking swift action with this legislation, we fail our children, their families and the future of this country,” said Miller, the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee. “The health and academic success of an entire generation of children is at stake.”

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) said Wednesday she’s hopeful the upper chamber will soon take up her bill to improve school lunch programs and other child nutrition initiatives. The Arkansas Democrat said she’s pushing party leaders to bring the reauthorization bill to the floor before the programs expire at the end of September. 

“I’m kind of needling them,” Lincoln told The Hill during a child welfare forum in Washington.

Lincoln’s bill, which would provide $4.5 billion to bolster the safety and nutritional value of student meals, passed the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously in March. The bipartisan support has left child advocates optimistic that the funding proposal can squeak through Congress this year, even as most legislation has been stalled in the Senate over deficit spending concerns.  

Bruce Lesley, head of First Focus, a child welfare group, said Wednesday that congressional gridlock is threatening a number of child programs. But among the legislation his group is pushing, Lesley noted that Lincoln’s bill — dubbed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 — has the best chance of passing this year.

The White House also likes the bill’s chances. Heather Higginbottom, President Obama’s deputy director of domestic policy, said Wednesday that the Agriculture vote is good indication that the bill has legs, even in this year’s politically polarized environment. The White House, Higginbottom said, is “very hopeful that the Senate will take up that legislation very soon.”

Meanwhile, the House Education and Labor Committee is marking up the lower chamber’s version of the bill Wednesday afternoon. That bill, sponsored by panel chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), would expand funding for child safety and nutrition programs by roughly $8 billion. The pricetag — and the fact that the new costs aren’t all offset — has riled the opposition of panel Republicans, who are leery of more government borrowing. 

Lincoln said Wednesday that she and Miller are largely on the same page when it comes to reforming child nutrition programs. But she doubted that the House’s larger, unfunded bill could survive a Congress with little appetite for more deficit spending.

Health experts joined a member of the House Democratic leadership on a conference call Tuesday to stress the human health risks of treating farm animals with antibiotics. The House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee holds a hearing Wednesday on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, the third in a series of oversight hearings on antibiotic resistance. Rep. Louise Slaughter's (D-N.Y.) bill to restrict the use of antibiotics to treat livestock will be discussed during the hearing.

On the call, experts with the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, the Institute for a Sustainable Future and other groups said 70 percent of antibiotics in the United States are used to promote animal growth and compensate for overcrowding conditions on factory farms. Unfortunately, said Lance Price of Arizona’s Translational Genomics Research Institute, every time an antibiotic is used it loses its effectiveness as more resistant bacteria are created.

Slaughter’s bill, which is opposed by several food industry groups, would protect seven types of antibiotics from being indiscriminately used in animal feed. The bill has 113 co-sponsors.

The bill got a boost last week when the Food and Drug Administration released draft guidance suggesting that excessive use of antibiotics to grow bigger poultry and livestock “poses a serious public health threat.” This week the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees passed a resolution endorsing the bill.

“The use of low doses of human antibiotics in factory farms, given routinely to perfectly healthy farm animals, is a major cause of antibiotic resistance, diminishing the efficacy of antibiotics for human use, creating a growing public health threat of antibiotic resistance,” the statement reads. “These antibiotics, vital to protecting human health for everything from skin infections to salmonella to bacterial pneumonia, should always be administered judiciously.”

Slaughter, a microbiologist by training, added that she hopes the bill “will also impress upon physicians” that it’s equally “foolish” for them to prescribe antibiotics for common illnesses.

Salsa and guacamole are emerging as some of the fastest-growing causes of foodborne illness, according to a study released Monday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Between 1998 and 2008, there were twice as many foodborne outbreaks associated with salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo than there were in the previous decade, CDC found.

Magdalena Kendall, a researcher at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) who helped with the study, named several possible factors behind the jump. Salsa and guacamole, she noted, are often made in large batches, so even a small amount of contamination could affect many people; they tend to sit outside of refrigerators for long stretches of time; and they're both made with raw ingredients, including tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and cilantro, "each of which has been implicated in past outbreaks," Kendall said.

CDC began monitoring the cause of foodborne outbreaks in 1973, but the first case associated with salsa and guacamole didn't appear until 11 years later. Between 1984 and 1997, those dishes accounted for 1.5 percent of all foodborne outbreaks — a rate that jumped to 3.9 percent between 1998 and 2008, researches found. 

"Awareness that salsa and guacamole can transmit foodborne illness, particularly in restaurants, is key to preventing future outbreaks," Kendall said.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday pushed for tougher fines — as high as $50,000 per violation — for airline caterers with repeat health code violations. He also asked the Food and Drug Administration to impose new rules that would ban repeat offenders from operating at all U.S. airports.

"I would like to work with you in crafting legislation to enhance the penalties that FDA will have at its disposal for repeated violations of our airline food safety laws and regulations," Schumer wrote in a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. "While there is current legislation pending in Congress that the FDA supports, legislation that will significantly enhance the safety of our food supply and increase penalties for other types of violations, the problem of contamination in the airline food preparation process also needs to be addressed through increased penalties."

Current penalties are $1,000 per violation regardless of whether the violator is a repeat offender, and Schumer said he plans to introduce legislation increasing fines to as much as $50,000. He also asked Hamburg to change FDA rules so that caterers involved in repeat offenses face a shutdown of all their U.S. operations, not just the ones where violations were identified.

"The FDA needs to end this cat-and-mouse game that encourages airline caterers to only clean up certain of their facilities after being caught red-handed," Schumer said in a statement. "If these companies are threatened with a shutdown nationwide, they will make sure they are in compliance nationwide."

The letter comes after FDA inspectors cited three of the world's largest caterers for suspected health and sanitation violations this year and last. The caterers — LSG Sky Chefs, Gate Gourmet and Flying Food Group — prepared more than 675 million meals in 2009, according to Schumer's office.

The Food and Drug Administration is recommending that farmers stop using antibiotics to produce more and bigger poultry and livestock after concluding that the practice has contributed to an increase in drug resistance that "poses a serious public health threat."

The draft guidance — recommendations that do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities — suggests limiting the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals only when needed to assure the animals' health. It also calls for phasing in veterinary oversight or consultation in the use of these drugs.

The agency is accepting comments from industry and consumers for 60 days. 

House Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who has introduced legislation to restrict the practice, said the FDA needs to go further.

"I am glad that the FDA is acknowledging the devastating public health implications of antibiotic overuse in agriculture, and plans to take action to reduce this usage," she said in a statement released shortly after the guidance was released. "The FDA has proposed good steps, but they have not gone far enough or moved fast enough. We cannot wait any longer. Scientists and public health experts have known for many years that these drugs were being overused by farmers. Testimony in my committee a year ago revealed that the only thing accomplished by pumping antibiotics into healthy animals is to dilute the effectiveness of our medicines."

Slaughter's "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act" would phase out the non-therapeutic use of specific classes of antibiotics in food-producing animals, while permitting their continued therapeutic use in sick animals. The bill was introduced in March 2009 and has 113 co-sponsors, but lingers in the Energy and Commerce Committee.