A November 7, 2011, Food Safety News report has questioned the practice of filtering honey to remove pollen, alleging that “more than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce.” According to investigative reporter Andrew Schneider, the ultrafiltering process “is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese” that makes it impossible to determine the honey’s source. As a result, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not consider ultra-filtered products to be “honey,” although it does not check domestic honey for pollen. Food Safety News sent 60 honey samples bought in 10 states and Washington, D.C., to Texas A&M melissopalynologist Vaughn Bryant for pollen analysis. The results purportedly showed that 76 percent of samples bought at groceries stores had all the pollen removed, while 100 percent of samples from drugstores and 100 percent of individually packaged samples for restaurants contained no…
Walter Willett, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, and David Ludwig, Department of Medicine, Children’s Hospital (Boston), have co-authored a perspective piece in The New England Journal of Medicine titled “The 2010 Dietary Guidelines—The Best Recipe for Health?” While noting that some of the dietary guideline changes represent positive progress, they express concerns about “several components” lacking in “scientific foundation,” such as burying a recommendation to limit sugar-sweetened beverages “deep in the guidelines” and continuing to recommend “three daily servings of dairy products, despite a lack of evidence that dairy intake protects against bone fractures and probable or possible links to prostate or ovarian cancers.” Among other matters, the authors suggest that stronger, clear, scientifically sound guidelines require (i) removing primary responsibility for their development from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has “conflicts of interest . . . arising from its institutional mission to promote commodities,” to the…
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health $16 million “to establish a global center of excellence to address the childhood obesity epidemic.” According to a Johns-Hopkins news release, the initiative will involve more than 40 investigators from 15 U.S. and international institutions to integrate basic science, epidemiology, nutrition, medicine, engineering, and environmental and social policy research, among other disciplines. Johns Hopkins University and other institutions will contribute an additional $4 million to the enterprise. Founding Director Youfa Wang said, “The new Center will address many needs in the prevention and study of childhood obesity. This initiative will help create research and training opportunities that go beyond traditional methods, and on an unprecedented global scale.” The center’s focus will be on “studying the drivers of the childhood obesity epidemic and environmental and policy interventions,” as well as providing “rapid-response grants to investigators…
An asset management company has reportedly filed a lawsuit in a California state court against “Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty” (SHAC), an organization apparently dedicated to closing down a life sciences company that tests pharmaceutical, agricultural and veterinary products on animals, alleging that SHAC has targeted its employees for harassment because the company holds shares in a pharmaceutical company that does business with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). According to BlackRock’s complaint for injunctive relief, which also named three individuals as defendants, SHAC has held demonstrations at the homes of the money manager’s employees, threatened them and terrified their children. SHAC’s website purportedly displays images of the protests and “names the targeted employees for all the public to see.” The complaint also apparently contends that one of the defendants “has already been permanently enjoined by a California state court from among other things, any act of violence or making any threat of…
A federal court in California has entered an order granting the motion of conventional alfalfa farmers and environmental groups for an award of attorney’s fees and costs in litigation that successfully challenged a U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) decision to de-regulate genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa without conducting an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Geertson Seed Farms v. Johanns, No. 06-01075 (N.D. Cal., decided November 8, 2011). While the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately reversed lower court rulings in the case as to the scope of relief granted, the core determination that APHIS had violated NEPA survived the appeal. Due to the “limited” nature of the plaintiffs’ success, the court imposed a 10-percent reduction on their request and ordered a total award of $1.6 million. The defendant had argued that the plaintiffs were entitled to $829,422 only.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that liability insurers of a major U.S. egg producer have no obligation to defend it in class action lawsuits alleging that the egg producer conspired with others to keep the price of eggs artificially high. Rose Acre Farms, Inc. v. Columbia Cas. Co., No. 11-1599 (7th Cir., decided November 1, 2011). Rose Acre Farms claimed that the antitrust actions sought damages falling under what the policies call “personal and advertising injury.” The court disagreed, noting that the company tried to “connect its advertising to the antitrust suit in [a] convoluted manner.” Because the antitrust complaints had nothing to do with trademark infringement, i.e., using another’s advertising idea without permission, which is the conduct covered by the “advertising injury” provision, the court affirmed the lower court’s ruling denying coverage
Following oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court on the validity of a California law that prohibits slaughterhouses from receiving, processing or selling nonambulatory animals, court watchers are predicting that the law will not survive the National Meat Association’s preemption challenge. Nat’l Meat Ass’n v. Harris, No. 10-224 (U.S., argued November 9, 2011). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, finding that the states may regulate “what kinds of animals may be slaughtered,” despite express preemption language in the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Additional information about the Ninth Circuit’s ruling appears in Issue 344 of this Update. According to news sources, the justices did not appear to accept the fine distinction adopted by the lower court. Under the federal law, federal inspectors are authorized to decide what to do with animals that cannot walk when they reach the slaughterhouse; in some cases, they determine that animals may be…
The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution calling for a ban on most uses of antibiotics in livestock. Noting that “superbugs” take the lives of approximately 25,000 people in Europe each year, the non-binding resolution urges the European Commission (EC) to “make legislative proposals to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics in livestock farming.” The European Union already bans antibiotics to boost animal growth, but the resolution addresses the need to prevent disease by keeping veterinary and human medicines as separate as possible. Among other things, the resolution urges the EC to prevent “last resort” antibiotics from being used in animals and allow the drugs only to be administered under licensed conditions combined with resistance monitoring. “The growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics is already a serious problem today and a potential health time bomb in the future,” said the Parliament’s Public Health Committee Chair Jo Leinen. “We need a clear EU…
The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has issued a notice addressing its amendment to “the calculation used to convert estimates of animal cancer potencyto estimates of human cancer potency, which is used to calculate no significant risk levels for carcinogens listed under Proposition 65.” According to the notice, the amendment took effect November 11, 2011, and will change “the existing regulatory provision to a ratio of human to animal bodyweight to the one-fourth power for interspecies conversion and delete[] the provision giving specific scaling factors for mice and rat data.” OEHHA has also announced that its Carcinogen Identification Committee has been asked to consider whether Dibenzanthracenes should be added to the Proposition 65 list. These substances are ubiquitous polyaromatic hydrocarbons that are the product of incomplete combustion, and human exposure may occur from contaminated food or water. Public comments are requested by January 10, 2012.…
After a coalition of advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking an order compelling the agency to rule on 1999 and 2005 petitions that asked the agency to withdraw approval of certain antimicrobial drugs in food animal production, the agency finally acted. Information about the lawsuit appears in Issue 396 of this Update. According to November 7, 2011, letters addressed to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Environmental Defense, “the Agency has decided not to institute formal withdrawal proceedings at this time and instead is currently pursuing other alternatives to address the issue of antimicrobial resistance related to the production use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture.” FDA contends that withdrawal proceedings can be protracted and consume significant agency resources. While the agency notes that it shares the petitioners’ “concern about the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals for…
