Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity has announced its fall 2011 Seminar Series featuring the interdisciplinary work of public policy and health advocates, as well as legal and industry insights. Speakers in the series will include (i) Legacy President and CEO Cheryl Healton (Lessons Learned from the Tobacco Wars for Products Which Adversely Impact Health); (ii) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Assistant Professor Lainie Rutkow (Can the Food Industry Legally Choose to Do No Harm?); (iii) Columbia Mailman School of Public Health Assistant Professor Y. Claire Wang (Excess Intake and Taxes on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: Potential Implications on Healthcare Costs); (iv) Center for Science in the Public Interest Director Michael Jacobson (Nutrition and the Politics of Food); and (v) American University School of Communication Professor Kathryn Montgomery (Emerging Issues in Digital Food Marketing). Hosted at the Rudd Center in New Haven, Connecticut, the seminars are open to the public…
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The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently issued a summary of an October 21, 2010, workshop titled “Legal Strategies in Childhood Obesity Prevention,” where public policy experts and stakeholders discussed national, state and local health initiatives that employ legal strategies “to bring about change as well as the challenges in implementing these changes.” The workshop summary reflects attendees’ views on various topics, including (i) the potential of legal strategies to address childhood obesity; (ii) how legal strategies have been used in other public health areas, such as firearm injury prevention; (iii) actions by the Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal agencies; (iv) food industry perspectives; (v) whether regulations and taxes can prevent obesity; (vi) legal approaches to increase physical activity in communities; (vii) the use of litigation to effect policy changes; and (viii) the role of attorneys general and local public health agencies. More specifically, workshop…
According to a news source, Chinese officials have arrested about 2,000 people and shut down almost 5,000 food production facilities since April 2011, in an effort to stop the industry’s use of illegal food additives. The initiative apparently followed scandals involving pork so full of bacteria that it allegedly glowed in the dark and milk laced with melamine that led to the deaths of least six infants and sickened more than 300,000 in 2008. The Chinese government claims that nearly 6 million food businesses have been inspected and “underground” food production and storage sites destroyed. See Agence France Presse, August 4, 2011.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently sent a letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg urging the agency to act on an April 2005 advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) related to serving-size regulations. According to the letter, CSPI first responded to the ANPR by asking FDA to (i) “take enforcement action against manufacturers that mislabel products as multiple servings when they are typically consumed in one eating occasion,” and (ii) “initiate a rulemaking proceeding to revise the Reference Amounts Currently Consumed (‘RACC’) regulations to reflect consumption patterns that have developed since the data were collected” in the 1970s. In particular, the consumer watchdog has singled out canned soup, ice cream, coffee creamer, and aerosol non-stick cooking sprays as bearing “unrealistic” serving-size labels that “understate the calories, sodium and saturated fat consumers are likely to get from those products.” “Given the prevalence of…
A coalition of 38 industry organizations has sent a letter to U.S. House and Senate leaders urging Congress to allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to complete its review of an application for genetically engineered (GE) salmon. The coalition’s letter comes on the heels of a recent House-approved appropriations amendment that prohibits FDA from using money in fiscal year 2012 to finalize its review of AquaBounty Technologies’ application to produce fast-growing GE Atlantic salmon and the efforts of a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers to halt the application’s approval process. According to the “Animal Agriculture Coalition,” if it the amendment becomes law, FDA’s ability to process such applications using best-available science would be diminished, damaging the agency’s credibility “at home and overseas.” Coalition members include the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), whose president and CEO was quoted as saying that “disrupting FDA’s science-based assessment process based on non-scientific political concerns would…
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently released the summary of a November 2-3, 2010, public workshop titled “Leveraging Food Technology for Obesity Prevention and Reduction Effort,” which addressed how the food industry “can continue to leverage modern and innovative food processing technologies to influence energy intake.” According to IOM, “Eating is impacted not only by the biological responses that occur when the presence of food or even the smell of food triggers physiological chain reactions but also by societal norms and values around portion size and other eating behaviors.” Workshop organizers invited behavioral scientists, food scientists and other experts from multiple sectors to discuss “evidence-based associations between various eating behaviors and weight gain and considered the opportunities and challenges of altering the food supply—both at home and outside the home (e.g., in restaurants)—to alleviate overeating and help consumers with long-term weight maintenance.” In particular, the workshop attendees explored four general…
The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) have announced the agendas for their joint 2011 annual conferences slated for October 3-5, 2011, in New York. The two-day NAD conference, “What’s New in Advertising Law, Claim Support and Self-Regulation,” will include keynote remarks by David Vladeck, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) Bureau of Consumer Protection, as well as sessions on online behavioral advertising, claim substantiation, mobile marketing, litigation and FTC enforcement priorities, and the future of advertising self-regulation. Immediately following the NAD session, CARU will host a one-day conference focused on privacy and digital issues in youth marketing, with expert panels dedicated to new FTC regulations, multimedia and social media advertising to children, and responsible food marketing to children.
Corporations and Health Watch writer Monica Gagnon recently interviewed Anna Lappé about her new book, Diet for a Hot Planet, which describes the agricultural industry as “not just a victim but also a perpetrator of climate change.” According to Lappé, “Our food system indirectly and directly is responsible for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions,” a statistic she says is “largely missing from the public conservation.” In particular, Lappé focuses on a “corporate response to the crisis” that reflects the “multifaceted” nature of the food sector, where “players don’t always have the same self-interest and use different strategies of denying or acknowledging their impact on climate.” “What we are seeing is that lot of food companies are pushing to be their own police, not to have government regulate the industry,” Lappé claims, turning a critical eye on strategies like “green advertising” and urging consumers to conduct their own research on…
The 17 companies comprising the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) have reportedly agreed to abide by new uniform nutrition criteria as part of a voluntary effort to encourage healthier dietary choices among children. Under the new rules, CFBAI signatories have pledged not to market the following products to children: (i) juices with added sugars and more than 160 calories per serving, (ii) ready-to-drink flavored milks containing more than 24 grams of total sugars per 8 fluid ounces, and yogurt containing more than 170 calories and 23 g of total sugars per 6 ounces; (iii) seeds, nuts, nut butters, and spreads with more than 220 calories, 3.5 g of saturated fat, 240 milligrams of sodium, and 4 g of sugar per 2 tablespoons; and (iv) main dishes and entrees with more than 350 calories, 10 percent calories from saturated fat, 600 mg of sodium, and 15 g of sugar…
The European Union (EU) has temporarily prohibited the importation of some seeds and bean sprouts from Egypt after a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report linked the products to an E. coli O104:H4 outbreak that reportedly killed 51 people, including as many as six U.S. citizens. According to a July 5, 2011, EU press release, all imported seeds and beans “for sprouting” will be frozen until October 31, 2011, and all fenugreek seeds imported from one Egyptian company since 2009 will be destroyed. The ban apparently covers “seeds, fruit and spores used for sowing; leguminous vegetables, shelled or unshelled, fresh or chilled; fenugreek; dried leguminous vegetables, shelled, whether or not skinned or split; soya beans, whether or not broken; other oil seeds and oleaginous fruit, whether or not broken.” Officials apparently traced the E. coli outbreaks in France and Germany to a single importer that shipped Egyptian fenugreek seeds to both…
