The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has apparently launched a campaign “to publicly expose Perdue for using misleading labeling claims to manipulate consumers who are trying to make humane choices in the market place.” In a letter to Perdue Farms,Inc., AWI directs the company to cease advertising some of its chicken products as “Humanely Raised” or “Raised Cage Free” because these terms do not reflect “any meaningful improvement upon conventional husbandry.” According to the letter, such claims exploit the average consumer’s unfamiliarity with industry practices by implying “the chickens are raised under conditions that exceed the norm.” See AWI Press Release, May 12, 2010. Meanwhile, Perdue has reportedly defended the labels as responsive to consumer requests for additional education. “Consumers told us they regard the USDA Process Verified Program as being the most credible available today,” one Perdue representative was quoted as saying. “We therefore developed several USDA Process Verified programs,…
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The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Produce Safety Project (PSP) at Georgetown University has issued a report that calls for a “unified, cross agency” approach to tracking foodborne pathogens in humans, animals, food, and feed. Titled Building the Foundations of a Modern Food Safety System, the report charges the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with summarizing “surveillance data on human foodborne illnesses—including outbreaks and sporadic cases—and on pathogen contamination in domestic and imported animals, food and feed.” PSP apparently based its recommendations on “extensive research and interviews” with food safety authorities in Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, according to a May 10, 2010, press release. The group has urged U.S. regulators to learn from steps taken by these countries to reform their food safety data collection and analysis since the 1990s. In addition, the report provides specific…
Human Rights Watch has issued a report titled “Fields of Peril: Child Labor in US Agriculture” that describes the working conditions facing the nation’s youngest field laborers and calls for changes to federal employment and environmental laws to provide them with greater protections. According to the report, child farmworkers as young as age 12 often work for 10 or more hours per day, five to seven days a week. Some begin working part-time at ages 6 or 7. Many of the labor law protections for other youth workers apparently do not apply to agricultural workers, and Human Rights Watch reportedly found that many children earn far less than minimum wage, particularly when they are paid for production rather than by the hour and when their employers charge them for tools, gloves and drinking water. They also have higher rates of dropping out of school and experience higher numbers of fatalities…
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) this week published a consensus report titled Evaluation of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease, which urges the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to apply “the same degree of scientific rigor for evaluating biomarker use across regulatory areas, including drugs, medical devices, biologics, foods, and dietary supplements.” IOM describes biomarkers, such as blood cholesterol levels, as “biological yardsticks” used to predict health effects when it is difficult to measure the actual incidence of disease or death. According to a May 12, 2010, press release, “FDA has been hampered in its ability to assess the proliferation of health claims being made by food and supplement manufacturers in part because it lacks a process broadly accepted across the regulatory, food, and medical communities to evaluate biomarkers as valid and appropriate measurements to substitute for clinical outcomes.” Commissioned by FDA, the report proposes a three-part framework for…
A California trial court has reportedly begun hearing evidence to determine if a 2007 $2.3 million jury award to Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who claimed they were sterilized by exposure to pesticides was based on fraud. Defendant Dole Food Co. convinced the court in 2009 to dismiss two similar pending cases on the basis of testimony, by witnesses whose identities were kept secret due to purported threats of violence in Nicaragua, that the plaintiffs’ lawyers recruited bogus plaintiffs, coached them and used spurious lab tests to support their claims of sterility. An appeals court ordered the plaintiffs who had won awards in the earlier case to prove that their allegations were not fraudulent. According to a news source, Dole presented evidence showing that the plaintiffs could not recall details about plantations where they had purportedly been employed, could not answer questions about the chemical’s smell or were apparently sterile before they…
A woman featured in a 2009 New York Times article that was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on food safety has reportedly settled her claims against Cargill, Inc., which allegedly produced the E. coli-contaminated hamburger that left her paralyzed with neurological problems and kidney damage. Represented by plaintiffs’ attorney William Marler, Stephanie Smith is a former dance instructor now confined to a wheelchair. Marler claimed that her medical bills have already totaled more than $2 million and that she will require additional rehabilitation and multiple transplants. The terms of the settlement, which must be approved by a court, are apparently confidential. Marler was quoted as saying, “Stephanie’s tragedy has taken on a life of its own, and hopefully it will continue to focus people on why food safety is important.” Cargill reportedly said in a joint statement that it “deeply regrets” her injuries and has invested in excess of…
A federal district court in California has dismissed claims against the company that makes the product “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,” finding that, while not preempted under federal labeling law, the complaint failed to allege facts “plausibly suggestive” of a claim entitling the plaintiff to relief under the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently adopted Twombly/Iqbal pleading standard. Rosen v. Unilever U.S., Inc., No. 09-02563 (N.D. Cal., decided May 3, 2010). The plaintiff alleged that the company violated state consumer protection laws by advertising its product as nutritious when, in fact, it contains partially hydrogenated oil, “an artificial, man-made substance that has no nutritional value and is known to cause a number of health problems.” The defendant sought to dismiss the claims as expressly preempted under the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act, contending that use of the phrase “0g Trans Fat” on product labels complies with Food and Drug Administration regulations where a…
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has returned to a federal district court litigation alleging that a karate instructor was fired because he was obese in violation of a New York City law that forbids disability-based workplace discrimination. Spiegel v. Schulmann, No. 06-5914 (2d Cir., decided May 6, 2010). According to the appeals court, no cases have yet addressed whether the city law applies to the obese, and the lower court was directed to consider whether the plaintiff had made a prima facie case of discrimination under that law. The plaintiff, who claimed his roommate was fired from a similar position after the plaintiff notified the defendant that he intended to file an employment discrimination charge, also alleged unlawful retaliation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Affirming the lower court’s dismissal of this claim, the appeals court found that the ADA does not permit an individual to be held liable…
The European Union has reportedly allowed Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal located 500 kilometers from the African coast, to prohibit the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the archipelago. According to The New York Times, the European Commission “quietly” let the deadline pass for opposing the GMO ban, which Portuguese officials claimed was necessary to preserve Madeira’s rare subtropical laurel forests, known as laurisilva. “[T]he case of Madeira represents a significant landmark, because it is the first time the commission… has permitted a country to impose such a sweeping and definitive rejection of the technology,” states the May 9, 2010, article. In issuing its decision, the European Commission apparently circumvented the European Food Safety Authority and signaled “the unofficial beginning of a new—and potentially highly contentious—policy that would give European nations and regions far greater freedom to decide when to ban such crops.” This policy seeks to grease…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued industry guidance to advise food manufacturers on appropriate protocol for dealing with a boil-water advisory. The guidance is also “intended to assist food manufacturers in evaluating food that already was produced with water subject to the advisory.” According to FDA, once a boil-water advisory has been issued, food manufacturers “should stop using the water subject to the advisory until the water again meets the applicable Federal and State drinking water quality standards.” The guidance offers assistance to affected manufacturers in evaluating water used in heated foods, ice, bottled water, ready-to-eat foods, and water used for cleaning and hand-washing. The agency issued the guidance in response to the recent boil-water advisory that affected some two million residents of metropolitan Boston. Comments are requested at any time. See Federal Register, May 13, 2010.
