Food safety

The Senate majority whip has raised concerns energy drinks like Monster Energy, Rockstar and Red Bull might contain more caffeine than young consumers can handle.

Poor oversight of food and medical products in many exporting countries is putting American consumers at risk, the federal Institute of Medicine said in a report Wednesday.

The report comes after fake Avastin tied to an Egyptian firm provoked a health scare among cancer patients late last year. It recommends 13 steps that the Food and Drug Administration can take in collaboration with federal agencies, regulated industries and foreign regulators over the next three to five years.

According to the IOM, 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients, 40 percent of finished drugs and 85 percent of seafood consumed in America come from foreign countries. 

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and an array of consumer groups urged quick action after a federal court ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must start withdrawing approval for the use of unsafe antibiotics in animal agriculture.

"The FDA has been dragging its feet on this for 35 years," Slaughter said in a statement Friday. "We've all known that this is a public health issue for quite some time. … I'm pleased to finally see some progress, and I can only hope that we see swift action from the FDA on this looming crisis."

The drug and agriculture industries say feeding antibiotics to animals that aren't sick keeps them healthy and protects consumers. Critics of the practice say it risks making life-saving medicines less effective, an opinion New York Magistrate Judge Theodore Katz appeared to share Thursday.

"Research has shown that the use of antibiotics in livestock leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be — and has been — transferred from animals to humans through direct contact, environmental exposure and the consumption and handling of contaminated meat and poultry products," Katz wrote.

Forty House Democrats are urging the Obama administration to prohibit schools from serving "pink slime" to America's schoolchildren.

Facing increasing pressure over its embrace of the ground-beef filler, USDA announced it will offer beef absent the controversial product.

Three dozen food-industry groups wrote to congressional appropriators urging them to reject proposed food taxes in President Obama's budget for FY2013.

The letter was released in advance of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg's testimony before the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.

The proposed $4.5 billion budget for the FDA includes a $220 million annual "food facility registration fee" to help the agency carry out its expanded duties under the 2011 food safety law. Industry groups say the fee on food producers, makers and distributors would be passed on to households in the form of higher prices.

A coalition of more than 30 food industry groups wrote to the Obama administration Monday urging officials to request more congressional funding for food safety efforts instead of relying on food taxes.

The request is laid out in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House Budget Director Jeffrey Zients, who are working on the president's FY2013 budget proposal, due Feb. 13. Last year's budget proposal requested unspecified user fees to pay for food safety efforts but the idea went nowhere in Congress.

"As consumers continue to cope with a period of prolonged economic turbulence and food makers struggle with record high commodity prices, the creation of new food taxes or regulatory fees would mean higher costs for food makers and lead to higher food prices for consumers," the letter states. "As such, we believe imposing new fees on food makers is the wrong option for funding food safety programs."

The scare over imported orange juice is a regulatory issue, not a health one, reports MedPage Today. 

Four of the Medicare Innovation Center's 'innovation advisers' talk to Kaiser Health News ahead of their first meeting next week.

Medical malpractice reform faces rough sailing with Republican states' rights champions, Talking Points Memo writes.

Health insurance carriers that provide coverage for federal employees must soon begin offering expanded access to health records, Modern Healthcare reports (subscription required).

Sexual and drug use behaviors related to high HIV risk are down, the National Center for Health Statistics reports.

House Democrats are urging federal regulators to craft tough new standards for food safety audits in the wake of the deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in 25 years.

The top Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee say a new report on contaminated cantaloupes from Colorado that killed 30 people last year raises disturbing questions about the third-party auditors who visited the facilities linked to the outbreak. The auditors rated as "superior" facility designs and processing techniques at Jensen Farms, while federal regulators later faulted "serious design flaws" and the "poor sanitary design of the facility itself."

"This auditing system failed in the case of the recent Listeria outbreak," the Democrats wrote in a letter to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a new report Tuesday that sheds new light on the worst outbreak of foodborne illness in a quarter century.

Contaminated cantaloupes from Colorado infected 146 people in 28 states last year, resulting in 30 deaths and one miscarriage. The report follows staff interviews with Food and Drug Administration officials and agricultural producers and distributors; it concludes that the deadly listeria outbreak could have been avoided if Jensen Farms had maintained its facilities in accordance with existing FDA guidance, which is not mandatory.

"The committee launched an investigation to provide helpful information to the FDA, growers, distributors, and other authorities in their efforts to improve the safety of our nation's food supply," committee leaders said in a bipartisan statement. "The committee will continue to monitor upcoming examinations of the Listeria outbreak and related proposals to help prevent another such tragedy."

The report in particular faults the use of new processing equipment and the decision to implement a packing and washing technique involving water without added chlorine as two probable causes for the outbreak.