President Barack Obama (D) signed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (H.R. 2751) into law on January 4, 2011, ending a complicated legislative journey that began with House approval in 2009. In essence, the law gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to order food product recalls, calls for more frequent facility inspections, enhances FDA’s ability to oversee food imports, requires food facilities to have written safety plans, establishes science-based standards for the safe production and harvesting of produce, and exempts small farms that sell directly to local consumers from a number of provisions. As Commissioner of Food and Drugs Margaret Hamburg has noted, while some of the changes take effect immediately, others depend on budgeting. According to her blog post, “The funding we get each year, which affects our staffing and our vital and far-ranging operations, will also affect how this legislation is implemented . . .…
Category Archives Legislation, Regulations and Standards
The Federal Trade Commission has announced the settlement of allegations that The Dannon Co. exaggerated the health benefits of its Activia® yogurt and DanActive® dairy beverage. Under the terms of the settlement, Dannon does not admit any law violations, but agrees to stop promoting its yogurt as a product that relieves temporary irregularity or its dairy beverage as a product that reduces the likelihood of getting a cold or the flu, unless certain conditions are met. These include that the immunity claims are specifically permitted by the Food and Drug Administration and the irregularity claims are substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence. The company also agreed to pay $21 million to the 39 states whose attorneys general were also investigating its advertising claims. According to a news source, Dannon has indicated that it will in the future clarify that Activia’s benefits require three servings of the product daily. The…
The Massachusetts Public Health Council has approved a ban on the production and sale of reusable plastic products containing bisphenol A (BPA) that are intended for children younger than age 3. Targeted mainly at baby bottles and sippy cups, the ban will reportedly take effect on January 1, 2011, for manufacturers and July 1 for retailers. “We are taking this action as a precautionary measure,” Department of Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach said in a statement. “Our goal is to protect our most vulnerable residents—our children—in the light of mounting scientific evidence about the potential dangers of BPA.” See Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services Press Release, December 15, 2010.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a final rule announcing that it has removed saccharin from its lists of hazardous substances, wastes and constituents because it “is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health.” EPA proposed on April 22, 2010, to remove the artificial sweetener from the lists, and apparently received no opposition to the plan. Commonly found in diet soft drinks, chewing gum and juice, saccharin had been labeled a potential cancer-causing substance in the 1980s. According to an EPA press release, however, the National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer reevaluated scientific data on saccharin and its salts, concluding that they are not a potential human carcinogen. EPA removed the artificial sweetener from the hazardous lists because “the scientific basis for remaining” no longer applies. The final rule, which is in response to a Calorie Control Council petition to remove…
A recent National Research Council (NRC) report has apparently found no scientific evidence to support “more stringent testing of meat purchased through the government’s ground beef purchase program,” which distributes products to the National School Lunch Program and other public outlets. According to a December 9, 2010, National Academies press release, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) purchases ground beef from suppliers “who must meet mandatory process, quality, traceback, and handling controls as well as comply with strict limitations on the amounts of bacteria in the meat, such as E. coli and salmonella.” To assess this program, the National Academies established a committee to review the scientific basis of AMS’s ground beef safety standards, evaluate how these standards compare to those used by large retail and commercial purchasers, and recommend possible improvements to the federal system. The committee evidently found that AMS’s “scientific basis for the current…
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF) has issued a green paper titled Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework, which sets forth initial policy recommendations for “promoting consumer privacy online while ensuring the Internet remains a platform that spurs innovation, job creation, and economic growth.” To this end, the report “reviews the technological, legal, and policy contexts of current commercial data privacy challenges; describes the importance of developing a more dynamic approach to commercial privacy both in the United States and around the world; and discusses policy options (and poses additional questions) to meet today’s privacy challenges in ways that enable continued innovation.” Designed to promote “privacy, transparency and informed choice,” the IPTF framework reflects input from stakeholders in industry, academia and government. It specifically calls for (i) “establishing Fair Information Practice Principles comparable to a ‘Privacy Bill of Rights’ for…
President Barack Obama (D) has signed the Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law, calling the bipartisan legislation “vitally important to the health and welfare of our kids and to our country.” Details about the bill appear in Issue 374 of this Update. “We’re seeing this problem in every part of our country in kids from all different backgrounds and all walks of life,” the president said in a statement. “As a result, doctors are now starting to see conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type II diabetes in children—these are things that they only used to see in adults. And this bill is about reversing that trend and giving our kids the healthy futures that they deserve.” See White House Press Release, December 13, 2010.
According to a news source, a district court in the District of Columbia has denied a request seeking an order that the Justice Department submit a proposal for settling claims of loan program discrimination filed by female farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Instead, the court apparently urged the lawyers representing the litigants to work together to reach an agreement and to report back during a January 14, 2011, status hearing. Unlike recent cases addressing charges that USDA discriminated against African-American (Pigford I and Pigford II) and Native American (Keepseagle v. Vilsack) farmers, Love v. Vilsack reportedly involves putative class claims that have not been certified. Counsel for the women farmers and those representing Hispanic farmers with similar claims (Garcia v. Vilsack) contend that the government’s settlement proposals thus far pale in comparison to the sums agreed to in Pigford ($2.25 billion) and Keepseagle ($680 million). See National Journal Daily, December…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reportedly issued a temporary stay of a district court order mandating the destruction of 256 acres of genetically engineered (GE) sugar beet seedlings that were, according to the lower court, planted illegally in September 2010. Ctr. for Food Safety v. Vilsack, No. 10-04038 (N.D. Cal., decided November 30, 2010). Press sources indicate that the Ninth Circuit’s postponement is scheduled to expire December 23, when the court will either allow the crop destruction to proceed or extend the stay until it can thoroughly review an appeal from the lower court order granting the plaintiffs’ motion to remedy violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by pulling the seedlings out of the ground. The seedlings were being grown to produce seed for future Roundup Ready® sugar beet crops, which are resistant to glyphosate, an ingredient in a popular herbicide. GE sugar beet critics contend…
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has overruled Mayor Gavin Newsom’s (D) veto of a bill prohibiting restaurants from offering toy giveaways in children’s meals deemed too high in calories, salt or fat. Under the law, which takes effect in December 2011, restaurants can only provide toys with meals containing fewer than 600 calories and 640 milligrams of sodium, and if fat makes up less than 35 percent of the total calories. In vetoing the measure, Newsom called the legislation an “intrusive and ineffective approach” to combat the problem and “unprecedented governmental intrusion into parental responsibilities and private choices.” But Supervisor Eric Mar (D) told a news source after the November 23, 2010, veto override that parents and health advocates support the measure to help curb childhood obesity. “From the Institutes of Medicine to the World Health Organization, we know that reducing the consumption of junk food by kids could spare…
