The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have agreed to recognize each other’s organic certifications. As of June 30, 2009, Canada will have national organic standards in place that have been determined to be the equivalent of U.S. National Organic Program requirements. Thus, products meeting U.S. standards can be sold as organic in Canada, and vice versa. The only exception is for products from fields in the United States treated with sodium nitrate; such crops cannot be sold in Canada as organic. The agreement, however, does away with the need for a three-year transition period from sodium nitrate use. According to USDA, “more than 80 percent of Canada’s organic consumption comes from imports, and approximately 75 percent of those imports come from the United States.” The value of the total market for organic products in Canada apparently ranges from $2.1 to $2.6 billion. U.S. Trade…
Category Archives Issue 308
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that emergency processing is underway for the draft guidance titled “Questions and Answers Regarding the Reportable Food Registry as Established by the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007.” When finalized, the guidance will assist industry in complying with the Reportable Food Registry requirements prescribed by the Act, which required FDA to establish within one year of enactment an electronic portal to facilitate reporting of adulterated foods. FDA has delayed until September 8, 2009, implementation of the registry to consider comments and to allow further testing of the electronic portal for reportable foods. Written comments are requested by July 16, 2009. FDA has requested approval of the emergency processing by August 17, 2009. See Federal Register, June 16, 2009.
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deputy administrator reportedly told a House science oversight subcommittee that the agency plans to rely more often on independent peer review panels when seeking scientific advice or conflict resolution. According to a news source, this could potentially speed external review of EPA studies and cut agency costs. Such review would reportedly reverse a policy under the Bush administration of automatically referring problematic scientific risk studies to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for peer review. EPA Assistant Deputy Administrator for Science Kevin Teichman reportedly testified during a June 11, 2009, hearing, that the agency “very carefully consider[s] the complexity of the given assessment as to which form of peer review that we would use. More times than not, we’ll convene a peer review panel, which would have a face-to-face meeting, that might go through a contractor choosing the panelists, or it might be our own…
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has written to Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) requesting that the federal government “levy a tax on non-diet soft drinks to recoup some of the costs incurred by the government from the consumption of these drinks, as well as to reduce consumption.” Others signing the June 17, 2009, letter are the American Public Health Association, Consumers Union, Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, and Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. Claiming that “soft drinks are the only food or beverage shown to have a direct link to obesity,” CSPI contends that “a new federal excise tax of one penny per 12-ounce soda could generate more than $1.5 billion per year” and that even higher taxes “could raise roughly $16 billion a year— an…
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