Entries tagged with 'food safety'
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[Image: Good.is] E. coli in beef isn't the only troublemaker out there. Check out these other sources of food poisoning from Good magazine's latest Transparency featuring the top 10 FDA-regulated foods that have made the most people sick since 1990. Related Worldwide Meat Consumption Infographic White House Food Safety Group Has Website What Makes Raw Eggs Dangerous...
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In March, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the Food Safety Working Group, chaired by the secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. The group working to upgrade the U.S. food safety system now has a website....
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Food Safety Music is the creation of Dr. Carl Winter of the University of California at Davis. By listening to Winter's songs and watching his music videos, you can learn about bacterial contamination, irradiation, pesticides, and more! His parodies may be silly, but they're more fun than taking a typical food safety class (I should know; I've taken a few of those classes). Watch his video for Stomachache Tonight about the dangers of undercooked chicken, after the jump....
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This week the U.S. government reported that the safety of the nation's food supply has not improved over the past three years and infections might actually be increasing. Government health official said that to regulate an "increasingly global food industry" in which foods have more chances to become contaminated, compared to a time when most foods were grown locally, the nation's food safety system "needs a thorough overhaul." [New York Times]...
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Photograph from Wikimedia Commons A few weeks back, JGordon left a comment on my post regarding France's raw-milk cheese war: "Could someone explain the difference between pasteurized cheeses and raw milk cheeses? Does pasteurization just destroy the flavor of cheese?... Despite the near-illegality of raw milk and its rare consumption, several hundred people a year become ill from drinking raw milk, with the occasional death. Is cheese safer, or is the taste difference very significant?" The raw-milk debate isn't going away anytime soon, so I thought it would be a good time to answer questions like those above and lay down my take on the matter....
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At House hearings today, members of the U.S. Congress from both parties declared the need for immediate changes in our food safety oversight systems. Let's hope that partisan bickering won't overwhelm the need to get control of our food supply. Some choice quotes from the New York Times story on the subject: "We have before us one of the finest messes in history," said Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who accused both Congress and the White House of allowing the FDA to become incompetent.“As a result of the failure of giving Food and Drug the resources it needs,” he continued, “people are dying.” What more is there to say?...
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That's the question New York Times reporters Kim Severson and Andrew Martin raise in a terrific piece in today's paper. Here's the paragraph that really hit home: The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut butter products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold, and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification. Yikes! What's going on here? Am I the only person who bought a product made with organic peanut butter because I thought it was safer?...
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Phew. The American Peanut Council issued a big fat list of safe peanut products, including Peter Pan, Skippy, Jif, and all Reese's and Ben & Jerry's products. The salmonella outbreak that originated at a Georgia peanut factory has already been responsible for seven deaths and 500-plus sicknesses. [via Doobybrain]...
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Says the Guardian: "...food manufacturers and grocery stores have to comply with a new federal law that requires "Country of Origin Labeling," or COOL, on beef, pork, chicken and lamb. The new labels will tell consumers whether their food came from animals raised in the U.S. or another country. The law also covers perishable items, such as fruits and vegetables and a variety of nuts." Multiple countries may be listed, and a huge loophole that exempts processed foods still exists....
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From Gitwithit on Flickr Low in fat, high in protein, and filled with omega-3 fatty acids (which protects against heart disease and stimulates brain activity), canned tuna is a wonder food on paper. Until it starts making your hair fall out. As Mother Jones reports, Deborah Landvik-Fellner ate canned albacore tuna daily for 12 years until her hair started falling out and her speech started slurring. When she got her blood tested, frightening results came back: it had 48 parts per billion of mercury, nearly ten times the Environmental Protection Agency's notion of "safe." Shouldn't tuna be labeled if it's so dangerous? The Tuna Foundation sure hopes not. They know mercury scares will cause sales to plummet. In 2005,...
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