The White House, Office of the Press Secretary

In 2007, Carol Goland drove home from a meeting of the Dairy Labeling Advisory Committee in Reynoldsburg feeling optimistic. There had been heated debate over a seemingly simple issue: the fairest and most informative way to label dairy products made from cows that have not been injected with a controversial growth hormone intended to increase milk production.

The farmers using the hormone — commonly known as rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), but also rBST (recombinant bovine somatotrophin) — were worried about losing business to competitors labeling their products as “rBGH-free.” Goland, executive director of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, could empathize. Still, she’d argued — successfully, it would turn out — that Ohio consumers have the right to know how their food is produced.

But the matter did not stay settled. In February 2008, Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) head Robert Boggs issued a ruling that tilted the labeling issue in favor of farmers using rBGH.

Since 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended that labels touting “rBGH-free” also state that the FDA has determined that “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-supplemented and non-rBST supplemented cows.” But the FDA remained silent on details like size and placement of the disclaimer.

this article is VERY long… read more:
http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/got-artificial-hormoned-milk/Content?oid=1638383

(9/9/2009)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety & Inspection Service and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a public meeting to provide information and receive public comments on agenda items and draft U.S. positions that will be discussed at the 3rd Session of the Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance to be held in Jeju, Republic of Korea, Oct. 12-16.

The public meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Rm. 107-A, USDA, Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building, 1200 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250. Attendees will be required to present photo identification at the door.

Documents and agenda items related to the 3rd Session of the Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance will be accessible at www.codexalimentarius.net/current.asp.

Codex was created in 1963 by two United Nations organizations, the Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. Codex develops food standards, guidelines and codes of practice in order to protect the health of consumers, to ensure fair food trade practices, and to promote the coordination of food standards undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance was established by the 29th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 2006 to help develop science-based guidelines to be used to assess the risks to human health that are associated with the presence of antimicrobial resistant microorganisms and antimicrobial resistant genes in food and feed, including aquaculture, and their transmission through food and feed. The Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance is hosted by the Republic of Korea.

Interested parties may submit written comments at the public meeting, or by e-mail to David G. White at David.White@fda.hhs.gov.

For further information about the public meeting, contact Doreen Chen-Moulec, U.S. Codex Office, FSIS by e-mail at Doreen.Chen-Moulec@fsis.usda.gov or uscodex@fsis.usda.gov or by phone at (202) 205-7760 or fax at (202) 720-3157.

feedstuffs.com

Monsanto lobbyists to be placed in charge of food safety

By Jeffrey Smith

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here’s the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply — the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods — secret documents now reveal that the experts were veryconcerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.

lots more…. read on…

http://waronyou.com/topics/monsanto-lobyists-to-be-placed-in-charge-of-food-safety/

GMA Aims to Beef Up Private-Sector Food Safety Efforts

Supermarket News – New York City, NY, USA

GMA’s supply chain initiatives were announced days after President Obama proposed to increase the FDA’s 2010 budget by 19%. Half of the increase would go to food safety efforts, according to published reports.

“There is a rare and historic opportunity to enact significant food safety reforms through the combined efforts of Congress, the administration and the industry over the next few months,” Bailey said.

The Clandestine War Over the Food Safety Modernization Act

Is the day coming when even your home garden will be against the law?

Brian Doherty | April 20, 2009

Critics say that the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (H.R. 875), introduced in early February by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), will “effectively criminalize organic gardening,” conceivably outlaw “seed banking,” and will serve as part of a concerted Monsanto conspiracy to drive all but corporate agri-business out of the food production racket.

According to the office of Rep. DeLauro, the bill was inspired by a recent wave of contaminated food recalls and is supported by consumer groups both organic and non-organic. The bill should also, if it has the effect of increasing consumer confidence in the food supply promised, be of ultimate benefit to big food production companies whose livelihoods depend on public trust in the food supply.* (Which means that they have every incentive to police themselves, and in the enormous staggering majority of the time they manage to do business without killing or harming their customers.)

Will the govt’s move poison our diet?
Express Buzz – March 31, 2009

“I HAVE seen how Monsanto and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) have resorted to scientific deceit of the highest order to market genetically engineered milk”, says Samuel S Epstein, professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, and chairman of the Chicago School of Public Health and Cancer Prevention, at the University of Illinois. Nearer home similar sentiments would be expressed if the working of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the ‘watchdog’ of all genetically modified (GM) materials — of plant or animal origin — are critically examined.

Unwholesome Regulations on Food
Business Standard – March 14, 2009

The most controversial case, however, is that of Michael R Taylor whose career has swung pendulum-like between Monsanto, for whom he worked as a lawyer for seven years, and the regulatory agencies (the FDA and USDA) during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Taylor, it is widely reported, wrote the FDA’s guidelines on recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, while serving as its deputy commissioner for policy. The rules virtually ban dairies from making any distinction between products derived from rBGH milk and others. rBGH has become a bitterly contested issue in the US — it is banned in most other countries — because of its links to human cancer and serious health problems in cows.

Consumers Union, via Common Dreams, September 18, 2008

Statement of Consumers Union
WASHINGTON – September 18

Consumers Union finds it “incomprehensible” that the FDA will not require labeling of genetically engineered animals that are sold as food. Genetically engineered animals may contain genetic material from entirely different species. For example mouse genes have been put into pigs to help them metabolize phosphorous more efficiently, and spider genes have been put into goats so that they produce spider silk in their milk.

FDA proposed today that they will only review genetically engineered animals for their safety as food, and will not require any labeling. “It is incomprehensible to us that FDA does not view these animals as different from their conventional counterparts, and therefore something that under law is required to be labeled,” stated Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. “In our view, consumers have a right to know if the ham, bacon or pork chops they are buying come from pigs that have been engineered with mouse genes.”

Consumers Union is also concerned that cows engineered to produce antibiotics in their milk, which can help the cow avoid udder infections, also will not be labeled. “Unlike conventional antibiotics, which must be cleared from the cow before it can be used to produce milk or meat, the antibiotic that is genetically engineered into the animal will always be present. We are concerned both about the potential safety and lack of labeling on such food products,” stated Michael Hansen, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Consumers Union.