The Office for the Under Secretary for Food Safety, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have announced an October 4, 2011, public meeting in Washington, D.C., to provide information and receive public comments on draft U.S. positions to be discussed at the 19th session of the Codex Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems (CCFICS) on October 17-21 in Cairns, Australia. CCFICS is responsible for such things as “harmonizing methods and procedures which protect the health of consumers, ensure fair trading practices and facilitate international trade in foodstuffs.” Agenda items include relevant activities of the World Health Organization and draft guidelines for national food-control systems. See Federal Register, September 27, 2011.
U.S. Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have written a September 26, 2011, letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Jon Leibowitz, expressing concern over the practices used by some web services to track online behavior. The congressmen, who co-chair the Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, cited an August 18 Wall Street Journal article that raised questions about “supercookies,” files installed on computers which apparently allow websites “to collect detailed personal data about users” and which persist “even when consumers choose to delete regular cookies.” Believing that such practices should be banned, Barton and Markey call on FTC “to investigate the usage and impact of supercookies on the Internet and consumers.” “We believe that an investigation of the usage of supercookies would fall within the FTC’s mandate as stipulated in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to protecting Americans from ‘unfair and deceptive acts or practices,’” wrote…
Public health advocates from around the country have sent a letter to President Barack Obama (D) urging his administration to finalize the April 2011 proposed voluntary standards for food marketing to children. The guidelines would set limits on the amount of unhealthy fats, added sugars and sodium in foods advertised to children ages 2-17. Additional information on the proposed guidelines, which were designed by a Federal Trade Commission-led working group, can be found in Issue 392 of this Update. The September 27 letter was signed by 75 individuals claiming expertise in nutrition, marketing, medicine, and public health, including Kelly Brownell, Director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity; anti-tobacco attorney Richard Daynard, Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute; Frank Hu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health; Marion Nestle, New York University Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies; and Juliet Schor,…
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) has filed a claim under the amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act against a company that allegedly discharged a morbidly obese man. EEOC v. BAE Sys., Inc., No. 11-03497 (S.D. Tex., filed September 27, 2011). According to the EEOC, “at the time of his discharge, [Ronald] Kratz was qualified to perform the essential function of his job as a material handler II. BAE refused to engage in any discussion with him to determine whether reasonable accommodations were possible that would have allowed him to continue to perform the essential function of his job … The suit asserts that BAE replaced Kratz with someone who was not morbidly obese.” News sources have reported that Kratz, who weighed 450 pounds when the military vehicle manufacturer hired him, gained 200 pounds over the 16 years he was employed. He claims that his weight never interfered with his job…
A recent study has suggested that non-obese individuals are better able to regulate their cravings to consume fattening foods than those who are obese. Kathleen Page, et al., “Circulating glucose levels modulate neural control of desire for high-calorie foods in humans,” Journal of Clinical Investigation, September 19, 2011. Researchers from Yale University and the University of Southern California apparently studied brain scans of nine thin and five obese subjects as they viewed images of high-calorie foods, low-calorie foods, and non-food items during times when they had normal and low blood sugar levels. Researchers found that non-obese participants shown pictures of high-calorie foods had increased activity in the part of their brains used for impulse control while obese people showed little activity in that part of the brain. According to the study, “higher circulating glucose levels predicted greater medial prefrontal cortex activation, and this response was absent in obese subjects. These…
A new Environmental Health Perspectives paper discusses a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee’s recent conclusion that the evidence is too inconclusive to associate children’s consumption of artificial colors in food with hyperactivity or to recommend warning labels. Titled “Synthetic Food Colors and Neurobehavioral Hazards: The View from Environmental Health Research,” the paper suggests that if FDA had approached the issue from an environmental health perspective and broadened its inquiry to consider a range of adverse effects, current research findings could have supported a different outcome. The author notes that the review confined itself “to the clinical diagnosis of hyperactivity . . . rather than asking the broader environmental question of behavioral effects in the general population; it failed to recognize the significance of vulnerable subpopulations; it misinterpreted the meaning of effect size as a criterion of risk.” The article concludes that scientific risk reviews with “too narrow a…
WSJ Reporter Ashby Jones provides an overview of the recent spate of lawsuits challenging food makers’ claims that their products are “All Natural” or “100% Natural.” Without an official Food and Drug Administration (FDA) definition of the term, determining whether such product claims constitute fraud can be difficult, according to lawyers such as Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Stephen Gardner, who was quoted as saying, “We badly want them to provide some clarity on the issue, but they’ve repeatedly failed to do anything.” The article notes how FDA muddied the waters for products containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) by announcing in 2008 that it is not “natural” and then later pronouncing that it actually depends on how synthetic ingredients are used to make the HFCS. Details about the FDA’s HFCS actions appear in Issues 255 and 266 of this Update. An FDA spokesperson acknowledged that the agency has…
The author of the 1971 bestseller Diet for a Small Planet has authored an essay that examines how global agriculture has changed since then. While Francis Moore Lappé notes that 1 billion people are hungry and agribusiness is concentrated in few hands—“in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations—with boards totaling only 138 people—had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales”—a global grass-roots food movement “has been gaining energy and breadth for at least four decades.” Among other matters, Moore Lappé discusses growing popular opposition to genetically modified crops and increases in connectivity through community-supported agriculture programs and farmers’ markets. Included with the essay are responses authored by Vandana Shiva, “Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds”; Eric Schlosser, “It’s Not Just About Food”; Raj Patel, “Why Hunger Is Still With Us”; and Michael Pollan, “How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System.” Shiva…
The Public Health Law Center at William Mitchell College of Law has announced the launch of a series of free webinars that will address issues relating to tobacco control, obesity prevention, worksite wellness, active living, and public health legislation. Scheduled for October 5, 2011, the first webinar will feature staff attorneys presenting on “Drafting Effective Public Health Policies.” A number of the health center’s staff attorneys focus on tobacco-control issues and projects; listed as a consulting attorney is Mark Perstchuk, who is the past president and executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
The Breast Cancer Fund (BCF) recently issued a report alleging that six canned meal products marketed to children contain bisphenol A (BPA) at levels averaging 49 parts per billion (ppb). Researchers reportedly sent 12 items total to an independent laboratory, which pureed the can contents in “BPA-free materials” and assessed BPA levels using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry. According to the results, the sampled soups averaged 77.5 ppb of BPA and the meals 21 ppb, with one canned soup purportedly registering a BPA level of 148 ppb. “The levels of BPA we found in these canned foods marketed to children are of great concern,” states BFC in its report. “While a child-sized serving (about two-thirds of an adult-sized serving, according to Kaiser Permanente’s serving size estimates for children) may result in BPA exposure at a level of concern, an adult-sized serving given to a child would result in even higher BPA exposure.”…
