The attorneys general for Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey have written to 11 companies asking them to discontinue the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles and infant formula packaging. Attorneys General Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Anne Milgram (N.J.) and Joseph R. Biden III (Del.) apparently asked manufactures to “affirm [their] commitment to safe products for our children,” citing recent studies that purportedly link BPA to “potential health problems.” The letter also noted that U.S. Representatives John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) have called for a Senate bill to ban the substance in all children’s products, as well as an investigation spearheaded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). “The preventable release of a toxic chemical directly into the food we eat is unconscionable and intolerable,” Blumenthal was quoted as saying. “Credible, escalating laboratory evidence demonstrates that even low-dose exposure to BPA…
Category Archives Other Developments
“Americans are largely unaware of GM foods, both of its presence in their lives and of its wide application in food production,” according to a survey conducted by the Rutgers Food Policy Institute. Less than one-half of survey respondents (48 percent) knew that GM foods are available in supermarkets, and less than one-third of them (31 percent) believed they had ever eaten GM products. Other survey findings showed that participants want food labeling to clearly indicate pesticide use, GM status and country of origin. See Associated Press, March 24, 2005.
According to the president for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit vegan group founded in 1985, recent, unpublicized studies have suggested that “cheese, chocolate, sugar, and meat all spark the release of opiate-like substances that trigger the brain’s pleasure center and seduce us into eating them again and again.” Neal Bernard also discusses research showing (i) “participants moving to a vegetarian diet have a harder time giving up cheese than almost any other food”; (ii) “the principal protein in cheese, casein, breaks apart during digestion to produce abundant amounts of morphine-like compounds called casomorphins”; and (iii) naxolone, an opiate blocker used to treat morphine and heroin overdoses, reduces the desire for chocolate, sugar, cheese, and meat suggesting that their attraction does indeed come from druglike effects caused within the brain.” Bernard asserts that “just as Big Tobacco intentionally manipulated the addictive qualities of its products, Big Food…
