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Three cheers for Margaret Hamburg who, rumors say, is to be the new FDA Commissioner.  We worked in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the same time in the late 1980s when I was a nutrition policy advisor and she was assistant to the director.  Since then, I have followed her career with great interest and admiration, especially when she headed up the New York City Health Department.  She’s a great choice.  This is a really tough job and she will need all the help we can give her.  So I’m starting with Go Peggy!

The Government Accountability Office, the agency that keeps a close eye on government integrity, says the FDA ought to be doing a much better job of regulating dietary supplements.  It grants that the FDA has taken “some” or “limited” action to go after potentially unsafe products,  of which, apparently, there are plenty.  The agency, it says, cannot do its job because it lacks resources and recall authority and gives supplements too low a priority.

This is old news, but the report provides an excellent summary of the history and current status of the dietary supplement industry and its regulation.  As is typical of GAO reports, the clarity of presentation is exceptional.  Here’s  what the New York Times reporter says about it.

Senator Dick Durbin (Dem-IL) has introduced The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act to give this beleaguered agency the tools and resources to do its job properly.  The proposed Act got immediate endorsements from food industry trade groups: grocery manufacturers, producers of fresh vegetables, and producers of frozen foods, for example.

How come food lobbying groups suddenly want a stronger FDA?  No doubt because the alternative is a single food safety agency that would impose real rules with real teeth, and would oversee the safety of food from farm to table.  Rosa DeLauro introduced just such a bill in the House.

And how’s this for today’s rumors (most definitely unconfirmed): Michael Osterholm is up for USDA undersecretary for food safety and Michael Taylor for head of the White House Office of Food Safety.  Caroline Smith DeWaal, a strong consumer advocate for foods safety is out of the running; she works for Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).  These are just rumors.  If they turn out too be true, I will have more to say about the potential nominees.

I have a hard time keeping up with the number of products recalled because they contain potentially tainted peanut butter.  So does the FDA.  It now offers a widget that you can load on your computer to receive automatic updates on the recalls. Here’s what the widget looks like:

The recall that I find most surprising comes from the Hain Celestial group, which just called back nearly 900,000 pounds (!) of frozen chicken products because they contain peanut butter produced at the Georgia plant that caused all the problems.  Frozen chicken satay?  Why is peanut butter in chicken?

And now FEMA is recalling its emergency disaster rations because they might contain tainted peanut butter.

The 1100 products recalled to date are fast approaching the record number of pet foods recalled in 2007. That, no doubt, is why Congresswoman Rosa deLauro (Dem-CT) has just introduced legislation – “The Food Safety Modernization Act” –  to separate off food from FDA oversight and create a separate agency to regulate the safety of the food supply.  As she puts it, this is the final wake-up call.  Let’s hope.

Not only do we have one food supply that serves people, animals, and pets, but that food supply is incredibly interlocked.  If one food causes problems, you can bet that there are problems in lots of other places.

Update February 7: The New York Times has produced a video on the recalls.

The FDA has its hands full these days, what with peanut butter, no commissioner, and Daschle withdrawing for consideration as secretary of Health and Human Services (the FDA’s parent agency).  Even so, the FDA is concerned about weight loss supplements that it considers fraudulent, and has now gone after 70 of them.  The FDA has a lot on its plate, as it were, and let’s hope the new administration figures out a way to make oversight of the food supply a priority.

February 10 update: the New York Times has a long piece on this problem.  Turns out that a lot of these so-called herbal products actually contain weight loss drugs of one kind or another.  They are not supposed to.

Thanks to Food Chemical News for telling its readers about the President’s appearance on the NBC Today Show this morning:  

Matt Lauer: There’s been a massive peanut butter products recall in this country over the last several weeks, most of the products traced to one plant in Georgia that has a bit of history of sending out products even though there have been traces of Salmonella found. The question…the obvious question people want to know is, “Is the FDA doing its job?”

President Obama: Well, I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch. And so we are going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations. At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter. That’s what Sasha eats for lunch, probably three times a week, and you know I don’t want to have to worry about whether she is going to get sick as a consequence of having her lunch.

This leaves me breathless.  I’ve been saying for years that the only thing that would ever get Congress moving on the FDA would be if a relative of an important Senator became seriously ill with food poisoning, not something I would wish on anyone.  Fingers crossed everyone!

Food safety must be becoming a huge problem for the food industry.  A group of ten food trade associations, one of them the Grocery Manufacturers of America, is calling on Congress to give the FDA the resources and power to impose stronger food safety regulations.  Really?  Have food companies finally figured out that a strong FDA would be good for business (consumer confidence, level playing field)?  Or are they thinking that this will give them the chance to write the regulations?

The CDC reports more than 500 cases and 8 deaths from Salmonella typimurium in peanut butter produced at a single plant in Georgia owned by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).

Fortunately, the number of reported cases is going down.FDA officials reveal that the PCA plant has a history of knowingly shipping peanut butter contaminated with Salmonella. But these incidents did not involve the same strain.

The peanut industry says this is one bad peanut and everyone else’s peanuts are OK.

I say (again and again): Peanuts are not kcovered by standard food safety regulations (voluntary Good Manufacturing Practices demonstrably do not work).  We need HACCP food safety regulations – with Pathogen Reduction –  for all foods, from farm to table.

January 30 update: Apparently, the New York Times editorial staff agrees with me!  And no wonder, given what their reporters are saying about ithis incident.