Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
FDA funding for food safety increases, by a little
Thanks to the Hagstrom Report for this item. It revealed that The Alliance for a Stronger FDA has produced a chart of the changes to the funding levels for the FDA in the Agriculture appropriations bill.
The group reports these increases for food safety funding:
▪ $5 million for innovation and emerging technology
▪ $7 million for advancing FSMA (the Food Safety Modernization Act)
▪ $8 million for strengthening response to foodborne outbreaks
▪ $3 million for dietary supplements
▪ $5 million for imported seafood safety
▪ $2 million for CBD activities
▪ $500,000 for antimicrobial monitoring system
▪ $1 million for standards of identity
These are drops in a very large bucket of need for FDA funding.
Please note that the FDA, a public health agency, gets its funding from agricultural appropriation committees, not health committees.
This is an unfortunate accident of history, but goes a long way to explaining why the FDA is so consistently underfunded.
