The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against a print advertisement by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Foundation alleging that meat consumption raises heart disease and cancer risk. According to ASA’s report, the poster under review featured a child smoking a cigar and the following text: “You Wouldn’t Let Your Child Smoke. Like smoking, eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Go vegan!” After considering two complaints questioning whether the link between meat consumption and disease risk could be substantiated, ASA concluded that the studies provided by PETA to support its claims failed to show any strong association between general meat consumption and increased risk of heart disease and various cancers. “We considered that because the ad likened the risks associated with eating any kind of meat to the risks of smoking, consumers would understand from the ad that the…
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has launched two public consultations on draft guidance for feed additives. Issued by EFSA’s Panel on Additives and Products or Substances Used in Animal Feed (FEEDAP), the first draft document offers guidance “for the preparation of dossiers for the renewal of the authorization for feed additives.” Under Article 14 of Regulation (EC) No. 1831/2003, FEEDAP currently requires applicants to renew feed additive permits every 10 years by providing enough technical information to “enable an assessment to be made of additives based on the current state of knowledge.” The panel has also requested feedback on draft guidance stemming from its updated assessment “of the toxigenic potential of Bacillus species used in animal nutrition.” According to EFSA, “Bacillus species are used in animal production directly as microbial feed additives or as the source of other feed additives, notably enzymes,” although certain strains—such as those in the…
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently published its recommendations for improving meat inspection procedures in the European Union (EU) after a previous assessment found that “traditional practices... are not always suitable for detecting the main meat borne hazards such as Campylobacter and Salmonella or contamination by chemical substances.” Billed as “a major piece of work that will provide the scientific basis for the modernization of meat inspection across the EU,” the four new opinions address the potential public health risks of meat derived from solipeds, farmed game, sheep, goats, and cows, in addition to setting “harmonized epidemiological indicators” for identifying biological hazards. Looking at data on the incidence and severity of foodborne diseases in humans as well as the outcomes of various residue testing programs, EFSA’s experts ranked the biological and chemical hazards of particular concern for each species, singling out verocytotoxin-producing E. coli, dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls as…
The European Commission (EC) has announced a public consultation on the Nanomaterial Annexes to the regulations governing the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical (REACH) substances. As recommended in the General Review of REACH published in February 2013, the consultation will contribute to the Commission’s “impact assessment of relevant regulatory options, in particular possible amendments of REACH Annexes, to ensure further clarity on how nanomaterials are addressed and safety regulations demonstrated in registration dossiers.” To this end, the EC has asked “informed experts user[s]” to complete a questionnaire about the technical provisions of the REACH Annexes, including whether the current definition of nanomaterials has changed the way companies account for nanomaterials in their portfolio or conduct safety assessments. The survey also seeks input on five proposals being considered by the Commission as it looks to update REACH’s registration requirements by the end of 2013. These proposals include (i) altering…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued a notice informing the public about upcoming sanitary and phytosanitary standard-setting activities of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) and seeking comments on standards under consideration and recommendations for new standards. The notice, which also lists other standard-setting activities, including “commodity standards, guidelines, codes of practice, and revised texts,” covers the time periods from June 1, 2012, to May 31, 2013, and June 1, 2013, to May 31, 2014. See Federal Register, June 21, 2013.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued an interim final rule amending the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program regulations “to establish nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, other than food sold under the lunch and breakfast programs.” Acting under Section 208 of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the agency considered scientific recommendations and voluntary standards for beverages and snack foods, as well as more than 250,000 public comments, in developing the “Smart Snacks in School” standards, which must also adhere to the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Effective July 1, 2014, the final rule requires all competitive foods sold in schools to meet the following guidelines: (i) “be a grain product that contains 50 percent or more whole grains by weight or have as the first ingredient a whole grain”; or (ii) “have as the first ingredient one of the non-grain…
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report criticizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its “limited” response to school districts that had trouble implementing the new school lunch nutrition standards for the 2012-2013 school year. According to GAO, which gathered feedback from eight districts, schools reported that restrictions on the amount of meats and grains served each week during lunch required them to eliminate popular menu items and made it difficult “to meet minimum calorie requirements for lunches without adding items, such as gelatin, that generally do not improve the nutritional quality of lunches.” In addition, some school food authorities (SFAs) observed that calorie range requirements posed a particular challenge in schools with both middle and high school students “[b]ecause the required lunch calorie ranges for these two grade groups do not overlap.” To address these issues, GAO has recommended that USDA “remove the meat and…
A new study examining the effect of diet on Alzheimer disease (AD) development has reportedly linked diets high in saturated fat to increased levels of lipid-depleted β-amyloid peptides (LD Aβ) in the brain. Angela Hanson, et al., “Effect of Apolipoprotein E Genotype and Diet on Apolipoprotein E Lipidation and Amyloid Peptides,” JAMA Neurology, June 2013. According to the study, which notes that the Aβ peptides partly responsible for AD “can be bound to lipids or to lipid carrier proteins, such as apolipoprotein E (ApoE), or be free in solution,” “levels of LD Aβ are higher in the plasma of adults with AD, but less is known about these peptides in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).” The researchers thus measured the levels of LD Aβ42, LD Aβ40 and ApoE in the CSF of 20 older adults with normal cognition and 27 older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with randomized members of…
A recent study has allegedly linked higher urinary bisphenol A (BPA) levels to a greater risk of obesity in adolescent girls, raising questions about whether BPA “could be a potential new environmental obesogen.” De-Kun Li, et al., “Urine Bisphenol-A Level in Relation to Obesity and Overweight in School-Age Children,” PLoS One, June 2012. Researchers with Kaiser Permanente apparently analyzed data from 1,325 students enrolled in grades four through 12 in Shanghai, China, to conclude that among girls ages 9-12, a urinary BPA level in excess of 2 µg/L “was associated with more than two-fold increased risk of having weight” greater than the 90th percentile of the underlying population. In addition, the study noted that the association “showed a dose-response relationship with increasing urine BPA level associated with further increased risk of overweight.” “This finding is consistent with findings in experimental animal studies where exposure to high BPA level led to…
“In what is becoming an all too familiar sight, the major food corporations recently teamed up with the First Lady’s Partnership for a Healthier America to announce their latest PR attempt to look like they are helping Americans eat healthier,” opines food activist and attorney Michele Simon in a June 19, 2013, post on the Corporations & Health Watch blog. According to Simon, the food companies that pledged in 2010 to reduce calories “in the marketplace” by 1.5 trillion have “jumped the gun” in proclaiming their success, as the official evaluation funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has not yet been released. In particular, Simon cites Bruce Bradley, “a former food industry executive turned blogger and author,” who questions the accuracy of a preliminary report issued by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF). “First off, measuring something like this at such a high level is recipe for bias. There…
