The Washington Department of Ecology has implemented the second part of a statewide measure “banning the sale of certain products containing BPA,” which now includes sports bottles with capacity up to 64 ounces. As of July 1, 2012, sport bottles containing bisphenol A (BPA) can no longer “be made, sold or distributed” in the state in accordance with a 2010 law passed by the state legislature. The first phase of the law, which took effect July 1, 2011, already prohibits “bottles, cups or other containers intended for children under age 3 that contain BPA,” although “cans designed to hold or pack food will still be allowed to contain BPA.” “A number of national and international scientific organizations have expressed concerns that BPA can interfere with the body’s hormonal system,” said the department in a July 11, 2012, press release. “Recent studies suggest some children may be exposed to enough BPA…
At the European Commission’s request, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published a scientific statement on the safety of food products derived from animal clones. In its June 2012 statement, EFSA reaffirms its earlier statements and opinions, noting that no new information has changed its conclusion that meat and milk from healthy cattle and pig clones and their offspring are no different “compared with those from healthy conventionally bred animals.” EFSA also finds no evidence that cloning farmed animals poses any particular threats to genetic diversity or biodiversity. Still, the scientific statement underlines that animal health and welfare “were compromised in a proportion of clones, mainly observed as increased mortality within the postnatal and juvenile period of calve and piglet clones, as well as in a proportion of the surrogate dams that were affected by abnormal pregnancies.” See EFSA News Release, July 5, 2012.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a July 6, 2012, notice announcing its decision to restructure its National Residue Program to permit more extensive compound testing of meat, poultry and egg products. According to FSIS, the revamped program aims to reduce the number of samples analyzed while allowing the agency to assess more compounds per sample using improved multi-residue methods. In particular, these methods will enable FSIS to screen for pesticides and environmental contaminants as well as legal and illegal veterinary drugs such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and growth promoters. “Under the new system, one sample may be tested for as many as 55 pesticide chemicals, 9 kinds of antibiotics, various metals, and eventually more than 50 other chemicals,” explained the agency in a July 2 press release, which noted that the previous program required FSIS to collect one sample per animal and…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will take part in a collaborative effort to create a public database that will contain 100,000 foodborne pathogen genomes to help facilitate the identification of those responsible for outbreaks involving bacteria such as Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli. Called “The 100K Genome Project,” the undertaking will apparently be a five-year genetic sequencing program openly accessible to researchers and others helping to develop tests that would identify the type of bacteria present in a sample within days or hours. According to one project participant, “Each year in the United States there are more than 48 million cases of foodborne illness. A problem of this magnitude demands an equally large countermeasure.” See FDA News Release, July 12, 2012.
U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) has released the responses to a February 16, 2012, letter sent to 60 food producers and retailers “asking them to disclose their policies on antibiotic use in meat and poultry production.” After analyzing the results, Slaughter has purportedly revealed that “while a small number of industry leaders provide antibiotic-free meat and poultry products, an overwhelming majority of food production companies routinely feed low-doses of antibiotics to healthy food-animals.” In particular, Slaughter has used these findings to bolster support for the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), “which would end the routine use of antibiotics on healthy animals” and “preserve the effectiveness of medically important antibiotics.” To this end, she has also highlighted a recent Consumers Union report, “Meat On Drugs,” as evidence that consumers would purchase antibiotic-free products in supermarkets. “Through my survey, the food industry has provided us valuable information, and with…
A recent study has reportedly claimed that the first generation of mouse offspring exposed to bisphenol A (BPA) before birth “displayed fewer social interactions as compared with control mice, whereas in later generations… the effect of BPA was to increase these social interactions.” Jennifer Wolstenholme, et al., “Gestational Exposure to Bisphenol A Produces Transgenerational Changes in Behaviors and Gene Expression,” Endocrinology, June 2012. After feeding BPA-laced chow to female mice during mating and pregnancy, researchers evidently noted that the brains of embryos exposed to BPA “had lower gene transcript levels for several estrogen receptors, oxytocin, and vasopressin as compared with controls,” with decreased vasopressin mRNA persisting into the fourth generation, “at which time oxytocin was also reduced but only in males.” According to the authors, their results “demonstrated for the first time… that a common and widespread EDC [endrocine-disrupting chemical] has transgenerational actions on social behavior and neural expression of at…
A recent study analyzing the effects of three weight-loss maintenance diets has purportedly concluded that subjects who adhered to either a low-glycemic or very low-carbohydrate diet burned more calories than those on low-fat diets. Cara Ebbeling, et al., “Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance,” Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2012. According to a June 26, 2012, Boston Children’s Hospital press release, researchers analyzed data on total energy expenditure from 21 adult participants who first lost 10 to 15 percent of their body weight and then completed each of the following three diets in random order for four weeks at a time: (i) a low-fat diet comprising “60 percent of daily calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent from fat and 20 percent from protein”; (ii) a low-glycemic-index diet comprising “40 percent of daily calories from carbohydrates, 40 percent from fat and 20 percent from protein”; and (iii)…
This week’s issue of PLoS Medicine includes an article in its “Big Food” series titled “Manufacturing Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased Consumption of Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Foods, Alcohol, and Tobacco.” According to the authors, “market data on commodity sales from EuroMonitor Passport Global Market Information database 2011 edition” show a “significant penetration by multinational processed food manufacturers such as Nestle, Kraft, PepsiCo, and Danone into food environments” in low- and middle-income countries. They suggest that this penetration coincides with a growth in the consumption of unhealthy commodities that is reaching and even exceeding “a level presently observed” in high-income countries. Comparing data on global trends in tobacco and alcohol commodities, the authors claim that “population consumption of unhealthy non food commodities such as tobacco and alcohol are strongly correlated with unhealthy food commodity consumption. In other words, in countries where there are high rates of tobacco…
The United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Children’s Food Campaign (CFC) has reportedly urged the Ministry of Health to prohibit use of the chemical 4-Methylimidazole (4-MEI), a byproduct of fermentation often found in soy sauce, roasted coffee and the caramel coloring added to colas and beer. In January 2012, California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment adopted a no significant risk level for 4 MEI, with Proposition 65 cancer warnings unnecessary for exposures at or below 29 micrograms per day. The development was covered in Issue 424 of this Update. According to news sources, CFC’s effort was prompted by test results indicating that colas sold in Britain contain 135 micrograms of 4-MEI per can. Malcolm Clark, CFC campaign coordinator, asserts that only caramel colorings “free of known cancer-causing chemicals” should be used worldwide. See Daily Mail, June 25, 2012.
Cornell Law School Professor Michael Dorf has observed in his blog that each of the three main opinions in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the “Affordable Care Act” “discussed the consumption of vegetables.” In his opinion upholding much of the law as a valid exercise of congressional authority, Chief Justice John Roberts stated “[M]any American do not eat a balanced diet. That group makes up a larger percentage of the total population than those without health insurance. The failure of that group to have a healthy diet increases health care costs, to a greater extent than the failure of the uninsured to purchase insurance. . . . Congress addressed the insurance problem by ordering everyone to buy insurance. Under the Government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg apparently responded in her dissenting and concurring opinion that the concept…
