WASHINGTON (AP) — So, a guy walks into a restaurant. Who makes sure his food is safe? It depends on what he eats.
A cheese pizza that arrived at the restaurant frozen? The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of inspecting it.
A frozen pepperoni pizza? That’s the Agriculture Department.
A fresh pizza, made at the restaurant? Both departments would be responsible for the original ingredients, if the pizza has meat on it. What if he Read the rest of this entry »

“They put about $50 million into completely reconstructing the place – new roof, new separation area between the roaster and production lines,” said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in litigating food poisonings and was invited to ConAgra’s headquarters to discuss the outbreak last summer. He settled more than 1,200 salmonella poisoning cases with ConAgra for an undisclosed sum last year.
The redesigned facility is seen as state of Read the rest of this entry »

By CARLA K. JOHNSON –
CHICAGO (AP) — A new study from Italy adds to a mountain of evidence that a mercury-based preservative once used in many vaccines doesn’t hurt children, offering more reassurance to parents.
In the early 1990s, thousands of healthy Italian babies in a study of whooping cough vaccines got two different amounts of the preservative thimerosal (pronounced thih-MEHR’-uh-sawl) from all their routine shots.
Ten Read the rest of this entry »

“I think the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch them, so we’re going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations,” Obama told Matt Lauer during an interview broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show.
“At a bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter,” the president said.
“That’s what Sasha eats for lunch,” Obama said, referring to his Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has increasingly relied on food-safety inspections performed by states, where budgets for inspections in many cases have remained stagnant and where overburdened officials are trained less than their federal counterparts and perform skimpier reviews, an Associated Press investigation has found.
The thoroughness of inspections performed by states has emerged as a key issue in the investigation of the national Read the rest of this entry »

Last updated January 23, 2009 11:04 a.m. PT
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state’s family and children’s ombudsman says its office has responded to a record number of complaints about the state Department of Social and Health Services.
In a 102-page report issued this week, Mary Meinig, director of the Office of Family and Children’s Ombudsman, said there were a “higher percentage of agency violations in 2008 than in any previous year.”
The ombudsman Read the rest of this entry »

With the peanut butter scare making news — the latest in a series involving salmonella-contaminated foods including tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and E. coli-contaminated spinach — there again rises the public clamor for doing something.
In the not distant past, studies have confirmed that the people reasonably enough are very much concerned about the safety of the food they eat.
Only government has the expertise and authority to do something Read the rest of this entry »

The grants are the result of a collaboration with the Georgia Office of Highway Safety to cut fatalities on state highways.
“A child under age eight has more than a two times greater risk of dying in a motor vehicle crash if that child is not secured in an appropriate child safety seat,” said Dodi Slaughter, RN, Child Passenger Safety Coordinator. “Our program partners with several other community agencies including the Lamar County School Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack believes a single U.S. agency should be created and put in charge of the food safety work now handled by a variety of agencies, said a spokesman on Friday.
The spokesman was not immediately able to say if Vilsack’s view was shared by the Obama administration.
Earlier this week, a House subcommittee chairwoman introduced a bill to split apart the Food and Drug Administration to create a separate Read the rest of this entry »

BEIJING, Jan 12 (Reuters) – China will launch a pre-Lunar New Year crackdown on food safety, the Health Ministry said on Monday, focusing on illegal use of additives after a milk scandal last year killed at least six babies and made thousands sick. The campaign would focus on seven provinces, including Hebei where the milk contamination scandal began, ministry spokesman Mao Qunan told a news conference.
“Groups and individuals who have broken the Read the rest of this entry »