Tag: food safety

Floyd Landis discusses how regularity uncertainty threatens the global CBD industry – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

[ad_1]

The American was infamously stripped of his 2006 Tour de France win after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Disgrace, downfall and eventually redemption all ensued, and he went on to launch Floyd’s of Leadville in 2016, which sells CBD products such as gummies, coffee, drink mixes and tonics.

CBD is oil or powder derived from the cannabis plant that can be added as an ingredient in food and beverages. It doesn’t contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana that produces a ‘high’. Landis discovered it after life as a professional athlete left him with ‘numerous lingering painful injuries’. CBD, he explained, allowed him a route away from opioids and other addictive drugs that in the past doctors were quick to prescribe. He then created Colorado-based Floyd’s of Leadville to share with the world his experience of the advantages of CBD.

“For me it’s been beneficial for anxiety and to some extent pain as well,” he told FoodNavigator.

But the current lack of hard evidence to back up the many perceived health benefits is one bottleneck for the CBD industry. Studies continue to show it may prove to be an option for, among other things, managing anxiety, insomnia, inflammation, arthritis, and even HIV symptoms. But these studies are as yet inconclusive. With the exception of Epidiolex – the first and only prescription CBD medicine approved by the FDA in the US which is used to treat seizures – no…

Original Author Link click here to read complete story..

[ad_2]

MMP News Author

Source link

September 16, 2023
Being Alive Is Bad for Your Health

[ad_1]

In 2016, I gave up Diet Coke. This was no small adjustment. I was born and raised in suburban Atlanta, home to the Coca-Cola Company’s global headquarters, and I had never lived in a home without Diet Coke stocked in the refrigerator at all times. Every morning in high school, I’d slam one with breakfast, and then I’d make sure to shove some quarters (a simpler time) in my back pocket to use in the school’s vending machines. When I moved into my freshman college dorm, the first thing I did was stock my mini fridge with cans. A few years later, my then-boyfriend swathed two 12-packs in wrapping paper and put them under his Christmas tree. It was a joke, but it wasn’t.

You’d think quitting would have been agonizing. To my surprise, it was easy. For years, I’d heard anecdotes about people who forsook diet drinks and felt their health improve seemingly overnight—better sleep, better skin, better energy. I’d also heard whispers about the larger suspected d angers of fake sweeteners. Yet I’d loved my DCs too much to be swayed. Then I tried my first can of unsweetened seltzer at a friend’s apartment. After years of turning my nose up at the thought of LaCroix, I realized that much of what I enjoyed about Diet Coke was its frigidity and fizz. That was enough. I switched to seltzer on the spot, prepared to join the smug converted and receive whatever health benefits were sure to accrue to me for my good behavior.

Except they never came. Seven years later, I feel no better than I ever did drinking four or five cans of the stuff a day. I still stick to seltzer anyway—because, you know, who knows?—and I’ve mostly forgotten that Diet Coke exists. But the diet sodas had not, as it turns out, been preventing me from getting great sleep or calming my rosacea or feeling, I don’t know, zesty. Besides the caffeine, they appeared to make no difference in how good or bad I felt at all.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer will soon declare aspartame, the sweetener used in Diet Coke and many other no-calorie sodas, as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” I probably should have felt vindicated. I may not feel better now, but many years down the road (knock on wood), I’ll be better off. I’d bet on the right horse! Instead, I felt nothing so much as irritation. Over the past few decades, a growing number of foods and behaviors have become the regular subject of vague, ever-changing health warnings—fake sweeteners, real sugar, wine, butter, milk (dairy and non), carbohydrates, coffee, fat, chocolate, eggs, meat, veganism, vegetarianism, weightlifting, drinking a lot of water, and scores of others. The more warnings there are, the less actionable any particular one of them feels. What, exactly, is anyone supposed to do with any of this information, except feel bad about the things they enjoy?

It’s worth reviewing what is actually known or suspected about diet sodas and health. The lion’s share of research on this topic happens in what are known as observational studies—scientists track consumption and record health outcomes, looking for commonalities and trends linking behavior and effects. These studies can’t tell you if the behavior caused the outcome, but they can establish an association that’s worth investigating further. Regular, sustained diet-soda consumption has been linked to weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, and increased risk of stroke, among other things—understandably troublesome correlations for people worried about their health. But there’s a huge complicating factor in understanding what that means: For decades, advertisements recommended that people who were already worried about—or already had—some of those same health concerns substitute diet drinks for those with real sugar, and many such people still make those substitutions in order to adhere to low-carb diets or even out their blood sugar. As a result, little evidence suggests that diet soda is solely responsible for any of those issues—health is a highly complicated, multifactorial phenomenon in almost every aspect—but many experts still recommend limiting your consumption of diet soda as a reasonable precaution.

A representative for the IARC would neither confirm nor deny the nature of the WHO’s pending announcement on aspartame, which will be released on July 14. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Reuters’s reporting is correct: In two weeks, the organization will update the sweetener’s designation to indicate that it’s “possibly carcinogenic.” To regular people, those words—especially in the context of a health organization’s public bulletins—would seem to imply significant suspicion of real danger. The evidence may not yet all be in place, but surely there’s enough reason to believe that the threat is real, that there’s cause to spook the general public.

Except, as my colleague Ed Yong wrote in 2015, when the IARC made a similar announcement about the carcinogenic potential of meat, that’s not what the classification means at all. The IARC chops risk up into four categories: carcinogenic (Group 1), probably carcinogenic (Group 2A), possibly carcinogenic (Group 2B), and unclassified (Group 3). Those categories do one very specific thing: They describe how definitive the agency believes the evidence is for any level of increased risk, even a very tiny one. The category in which aspartame may soon find itself, 2B, makes no grand claims about carcinogenicity. “In practice, 2B becomes a giant dumping ground for all the risk factors that IARC has considered, and could neither confirm nor fully discount as carcinogens. Which is to say: most things,” Yong wrote. “It’s a bloated category, essentially one big epidemiological shruggie.”

The categories are not at all intended to communicate the degree of the risk involved—just how sure or unsure the organization is that there’s a risk associated with a thing or substance at all. And association can mean a lot of things. Hypothetically, regular consumption of food that may quadruple your risk of a highly deadly cancer would fall in the same category as something that may increase your risk of a cancer with a 95 percent survival rate by just a few percentage points, as long as the IARC felt similarly confident in the evidence for both of those effects.

These designations about carcinogenicity are just one example of how health information can arrive to the general public in ways that are functionally useless, even if well intentioned. Earlier this year, the WHO advised against all use of artificial sweeteners. At first, that might sound dire. But the actual substance of the warning was about the limited evidence that those sweeteners aid in weight loss, not any new evidence about their unique ability to harm your health in some way. (The warning did nod to the links between long-term use of artificial sweeteners and increased risks of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and premature death, but as the WHO noted at the time, these are understood as murky correlations, not part of an alarming breakthrough discovery.)

The same release quotes the WHO’s director for nutrition and food safety advising that, for long-term weight control, people need to find ways beyond artificial sweeteners to reduce their consumption of real sugar—in essence, it’s not a health alert about any particular chemical, but about dessert as a concept. How much of any sweetener would you need to cut out of your diet in order to limit any risks it may pose? The release, on its own, doesn’t specify. Consider a birthday crudités platter instead of a cake, just to be sure. (Is that celery non-GMO? Organic? Just checking.)

The media, surely, deserve our fair share of blame for how quickly and how far these oversimplified ideas spread. Many people are very worried about the food they eat—perhaps because they have received so many conflicting indicators over the years about how that food affects their bodies—and flock to news that something has been deemed beneficial or dangerous. At best, the research that many such stories cite is rarely definitive, and at worst, it’s so poorly designed or otherwise flawed that it’s flatly incapable of producing useful information.

Taken in aggregate, this morass of poor communication and confusing information has the very real potential to exhaust people’s ability to identify and respond to actual risk, or to confuse them into nihilism. The solution-free finger-wagging, so often about the exact things that many people experience as the little joys in everyday life, doesn’t help. When everything is an ambiguously urgent health risk, it very quickly begins to feel like nothing is. I still drink a few Diet Cokes a year, and I maintain that there’s no better beverage to pair with pizza. We’re all going to die someday.

[ad_2]

Amanda Mull

Source link

June 30, 2023
Super crops are coming: Is Europe ready for a new generation of gene-edited plants?

[ad_1]

Brussels is finalizing a law to legalize new gene-editing technologies for crops across the European Union.

The EU’s ultra-restrictive GMO regulation, which predates newer technologies, sets extremely high hurdles for growing genetically engineered crops and allows EU countries to ban them even after they have been proven to be safe.

The new law aims to cut red tape and allow easier market access for plants grown with “new genomic techniques” (NGTs), such as CRISPR-Cas9, which target specific genes without necessarily introducing genetic material from outside the breeders’ gene pool.

The rules are being pushed by multinationals such as Bayer, Syngenta and Corteva, which together control the lion’s share of the plant breeding sector, as well as a host of smaller companies, scientists and farmers’ groups such as Copa-Cogeca.

They argue that the EU risks falling behind the rest of the world in using new crops with special traits that can make them more nutritious, efficient and better adapted to a changing climate.

Pitted against them are green lawmakers, environmental advocacy groups, organic and small farmers, and more than 400,000 EU citizens who have signed a petition against deregulating what they call “new GMOs.”

These groups say the rules will further tighten the grip of the handful of multinationals, allowing them to claim patents on crops that could have been obtained through conventional breeding methods, while threatening non-GM and organic production. They also argue that because NGTs have only been around for just over a decade, questions remain about their safety.

According to a leaked draft, EU countries will no longer be able to ban the cultivation of NGT crops.

The law simplifies rules even more for a sub-group of NGT crops that are deemed equivalent to crops obtained by traditional breeding techniques. The obligation to label foods as “GMO” will no longer apply to these “conventional-like” plants, and they won’t be subject to risk assessment by food safety regulators.

An earlier draft of the law had a carve-out for crops engineered to tolerate herbicides — which would still have been subject to the stricter GMO rules. However, a newer draft no longer makes such a distinction.

The European Commission is due to unveil the proposed law on gene-edited crops on Wednesday, as part of the latest package of measures under its Green Deal environment and sustainability agenda. This will include a new law on soil health, revisions of the food waste and textiles aspects in the EU Waste Framework Directive, and legislation on seeds and other plant and forest reproductive material.

[ad_2]

Bartosz Brzezinski and Jakob Hanke Vela

Source link

June 29, 2023
It’s 5 a.m. Somewhere

[ad_1]

JFK Terminal 8—It is 9:22 a.m., and I am learning about consumer protections from a food-safety inspector who is on her second Bloody Mary. There is nothing quite like alcohol to facilitate an expansive conversation: I should encourage young people, she tells me, to consider careers in food safety. She’s on her way back from a work trip, and I learn that she always drinks Bloody Marys when she travels, which is often, but never drinks them at home. We move on to other topics: reincarnation, ExxonMobil, karma, the state of labor unions. The only thing that seemed to be off limits was her full name (her job, she said, prevents her from speaking to the media).

We’re sitting in the New York Sports Bar across from Gate 10, which is next to Solstice Sunglasses and a vending machine selling ready-to-eat salads in plastic mason jars. In the corner, two blond women drank white wine. A passing traveler pops her head in: Does the bar serve French fries? The bartender says no, they don’t start serving French fries until 10:30. It is too early for French fries. But it is not too early for white wine.

By the time security spit me out into JFK Terminal 8 at 7:02 a.m., the bars were already slinging drinks. At least four bars had patrons, including O’Neal’s Restaurant (a “cozy wood-paneled pub,” according to the JFK directory) and Bobby Van’s Grill (“elegant ambiance and upscale menu”). At JFK, alcohol service can begin at 6 a.m., the same time bars open at LAX. That’s hardly early for major airports. At MSP, outside Minneapolis, opening time was once also 6 a.m. but is now 4 a.m.; at Tokyo Narita Airport and London’s Heathrow, there are no restrictions. Early-morning drinking at airports is not just accepted but pervasive, Kenneth Sher, a University of Missouri expert on alcohol habits, told me. The internet has noticed, too. “What’s with all these people drinking pints in the airport at 6am?” wondered a Redditor in one of the many threads devoted to the topic.

Outside the airport, this is not how drinking works—or at least, not how it works in public. Morning drinking, with few exceptions (brunch, tailgating), tends to be “a sign of pretty severe alcohol dependence,” Sher said. Legally, it is discouraged: Non-airport bars in New York State are not allowed to start serving alcohol until 8 a.m. (10 a.m. on Sundays), and most hold out until at least the early afternoon, if not happy hour, Andrew Rigie of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told me. But in the airport, the normal rules of drinking do not apply. “I’m not judging,” the bartender at Bobby Van’s Grill said, pouring vodka into a flute of orange juice. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

I’d woken up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport, and by the time I met the food inspector, five hours later, I would have believed it was any time you told me. I was hopped up on adrenaline—feeling glamorous and vaguely ill—even though I had accomplished nothing. Mostly, travel is standing in different types of lines. I waited for people to look at my ticket. I waited for different people to inspect my shoes. None of this especially made me want alcohol, even though the idea of drinking at the airport felt romantic, in a novelistic sort of way.

At Bobby Van’s, perhaps the most dignified dining option in Terminal 8, I ate lukewarm potatoes next to a sad-eyed man drinking coffee and red wine. Mostly, the terminal was quiet. How Do I Live played, which seemed like a reasonable question. I watched a man in a zip-up cardigan eat eggs.

What are any of us doing here, sipping early-morning drinks at the airport Bobby Van’s? I am here because I am trying to answer that question. Other people have other reasons. You can, by observation and experience, put together a basic taxonomy of airport-drinking types. There is the solo business traveler with time to kill and no particular interest in working. There is the festive couple for whom airport drinks signal the beginning of vacation, and their corollary, the festive group of friends. And then there is the anxious traveler, motivated less by excitement than by ambient terror of being in a pressurized metal tube at 36,000 feet.

For a place where everyone is watching clocks, there is no real sense of time at an airport. “If you look out, all you see is the tarmac, a few airplanes,” says Michael Sayette, an alcohol researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. There are very few cues that you shouldn’t drink, and maybe it is actually happy hour for you. “You’ve got people coming in from all over the world who are on different times,” he points out. “It really is 5 p.m. where they woke up.” The airport perhaps is best understood as what French anthropologist Marc Augé has called a “non-place:” a blip in space and time. “A person entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants,” he wrote in his book on the subject. “He becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of passenger.” It is perversely freeing, if lightly dehumanizing, to be alone in the airport.

Once you pass security—the transition, in the language of the business, between “landside” and “airside”—you assume another version of yourself. Landside, you are still anchored in your normal life, which is to say that you can come and go and hang out with your family and carry as many ounces of water as you want. Airside, you have assumed a new identity. You have become a traveler. You have no legible context and no obvious history. Are you a person who orders cocktails on a weekday morning? Who’s to say? You belong to the airport now.

So does everybody else there. There is a sense of solidarity: As fellow travelers, we are all indefinitely trapped in the same timeless, placeless boat. Why not drink? “It’s exciting for people to take an activity that is normally very, very regulated, time-wise, and then be embedded in a space where everything’s okay,” Edward Slingerland, the author of Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, told me. Alcohol signals the transition from one set of rules to another. “We use this, on a small scale, at the end of the workday, to transition to leisure time at home,” he suggests. “Drinking in airports is just kind of a bigger version of that. It’s a way of transitioning from our normal everyday lives to whatever unusual thing we’re off to.”

From the bartender at New York Sports Bar, I learn that women drink white wine and men order whiskey. I learn that back in Terminal 4, where she worked until recently, she’d go through five or six bottles of prosecco every morning shift. Luckily, for the travelers, JFK has no shortage of drinking opportunities, also including but not limited to Tigín Irish Pub, Soy & Sake Asian Eats, Blue Point Brewery, and Buffalo Wild Wings. And that’s not counting the multitude of private lounges, where elite passengers (or those with certain credit cards) are treated to an oasis of snacks and free-flowing booze. The American Express Centurion Lounge in Terminal 4, in fact, has three distinct bars, including a Prohibition-inspired speakeasy with drinks curated by a James Beard Award–winning mixologist.

None of this is an accident. The modern airport produces a captive, thirsty audience. Airports were once permeable by design, says Janet Bednarek, a historian of airports at the University of Dayton. Bars and shops and restaurants were open to everyone, and “airports depended upon non-travelers to spend money,” she told me. Then 9/11 happened, airports locked down, security tightened, and once you were airside, you’d passed a point of no return. For airports, Bednarek said, that provedt to be a business opportunity rather than a problem: People were now getting to the airport hours early, and they had to do something to pass the time, whether it was shopping or eating or lounging at the bar. “Airports are looking for any way they can to generate revenue,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst, told me. Airports charge airlines huge fees, and still, pre-pandemic, retail concessions accounted for approximately 30 percent of airports’ total revenue, according to data from the Airports Council International.

Here is the thing about the airport, though: Nobody has control. You cannot control the people sitting next to you, or their children, or the security line, or the prepackaged sandwich options at CIBO Express. And most of all, you cannot control when the plane comes, or whether it comes, or how long it is delayed. More than 20 percent of arrival flights in the U.S. in the first three months of this year were delayed, more than the same stretch in any year since 2014. And that’s not even considering the epic meltdowns that can leave travelers stranded for days. “In a way, alcohol may be crucial for air travel, because it allows you to relax into passive helplessness,” said Slingerland, who was in an airport when we spoke. “I’ve been on, like, 10 flights in the last week and a half, and every single one of them was delayed.” Alcohol, he explains, turns down your brain’s ability to focus, suppress distractions, delay gratification, and do all the things you need to do to succeed in your daily life as a functional adult. But you are not a functional adult in the airport. You are a giant suitcase-wielding baby.

There is, perhaps, a darker read. “I think 80 percent of what you’re seeing is people who, in their normal lives, would never drink in the morning,” Slingerland said. But that leaves a good number of people whose regular behavior is presumably on display at 7 a.m. No one at JFK seemed all that bothered by the white wine and whiskey passengers were sipping so early in the day, but it’s hard to not see it as yet another sign of what everyone keeps saying: Americans drink too much.

“Drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t used to be,” wrote The Atlantic’s Kate Julian in 2021. “Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol.” A study published last year traced one in five deaths of people ages 20 and 49 to booze. Another paper found that one in eight American adults drank in a way that met the criteria for alcohol use disorder, a figure that seems to have worsened during the pandemic. And drunken passengers cause problems. Although all-hours drinking is useful for airports, airlines have been less thrilled. “It’s completely unfair,” a Ryanair executive said in a statement arguing for stricter policies in 2017, “that airports can profit from the unlimited sale of alcohol to passengers and leave the airlines to deal with the safety consequences.”

Alcohol in the airport, I had thought, isn’t like alcohol in the world outside. But perhaps airport drinking isn’t different at all. It still facilitates transition from one state to another—only literally. It still provides the illusion of easing the low-grade misery of life. And it still fosters camaraderie. I thought about the food-safety inspector, whom I’d talked with for most of an hour and surely will never see again. Our conversation had been lovely, I thought. Why don’t I talk to people more? This is the weird duality of alcohol: It can simultaneously blunt and enhance the world. In the airport, you desperately need both.

[ad_2]

Rachel Sugar

Source link

June 7, 2023
FDA sketches out plan to bolster fragile US infant formula supply management | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The US Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday its initial strategy to boost and strengthen the management of the country’s supply of infant formula.

The announcement came just ahead of a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about what went wrong during last year’s infant formula shortage.

Committee members and experts who testified were critical of formula makers and the FDA’s food safety program, which the agency has pledged to revamp in order to protect the nation’s food supply and promote better nutrition. Many experts are concerned that the formula shortage of 2022 could easily happen again, even with those changes.

“While we stand here today, more than a year since the recall, it is my view that the state of the infant formula industry today is not much different than it was then,” testified Frank Yiannas, who stepped down from his role as the agency’s deputy commissioner of food policy and response in late February.

“The nation remains one outbreak, one tornado, flood or cyberattack away from finding itself in a similar place to that of February 17, 2022.”

A formula shortage that started in 2021 was exacerbated when the United States’ largest infant formula maker, Abbott Nutrition, recalled multiple products in mid-February and had to pause production after FDA inspectors found potentially dangerous bacteria at its Sturgis, Michigan, plant.

A former Abbott employee filed a whistleblower complaint about the plant with the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in February 2021. The complaint suggested that the plant lacked proper cleaning practices and that workers falsified records and hid information from inspectors.

The complaint was filed February 16, 2021, and was passed on to Abbott and the FDA three days later.

Yiannas testified that because of the siloed nature of the agency, he wasn’t made aware of the complaint until February 2022. It was only then that he learned that children had gotten sick with Cronobacter after consuming powdered formula made at the plant.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated at least four illnesses and two deaths in three states in connection. The agency sequenced bacteria from two of the children to compare against the samples the FDA took at the facility, but it did not find that the samples were closely related.

Cronobacter infections are rare but can be serious and even fatal, especially in newborns. The bacteria lives in the environment, but when these infections are diagnosed in infants, they are often linked to powdered formula.

“Clearly, I really wish, and I should have been notified sooner, so I could have initiated containment steps earlier. Had that happened, I believe we might not be here today,” Yiannas said Tuesday. “Had the agency responded quicker to some of the earlier signals, I believe this crisis could have been averted or at least the magnitude lessened.”

With more demand for other brands after the Abbott recalls, families across the country had to hunt through multiple stores for formula last year. Stock rates of baby formula stayed lower than they were the year before for much of 2022. Even in October, when rates had improved, nearly a third of households with a baby younger than 1 said they had trouble finding formula over the course of one week, according to a survey by the US Census Bureau.

The FDA said Tuesday that its new national strategy helps ensure that the country’s supply of formula will remain constant and safe.

The agency said it will work with the industry on redundancy risk management plans that will help companies identify possible supply chain problems. It will also continue to enhance inspections of infant formula plants by expanding and improving training for agency investigators.

According to the strategy, the FDA will expedite review of premarket submissions for new products to prevent shortages. It will continue to closely monitor the formula supply and has developed a model to forecast any potential disruptions.

It also plans to work closely with the US Department of Agriculture to build in more resiliency with its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program, or WIC, the nation’s largest purchaser of infant formula.

The new strategy is just a first step; the long-term strategy is expected to be released in early 2024.

Dr. Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement that the new strategy aims to incentivize “additional infant formula manufacturers to enter the market.”

Many parts of the strategy are underway, the FDA said.

“Safety and supply go hand-in-hand. We witnessed last year how a safety concern at one facility could be the catalyst for a nationwide shortage. That’s why we are looking to both strengthen and diversify the market, while also ensuring that manufacturers are producing infant formula under the safest conditions possible,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a news release. “Now, with this strategy, we are looking at how to advance long-term stability in this market and mitigate future shortages, while ensuring formula is safe.”

Formula stock rates are still not where they once were before last year’s crisis, Yiannas said, but the problem can’t be solved overnight. He said it was a good step for Congress to ask for a resiliency report from the industry.

One positive development that came out of the crisis is that manufacturers are reporting formula volume to the FDA on a weekly basis even though there is no legal requirement to do so, he said.

Historically, the FDA has focused on food safety and nutrition, not supply chain availability, but the Covid-19 pandemic opened eyes and served as the “biggest test on the US food system in 100 years,” Yiannas said. Food supply shortages made experts realize that the agency needed more intelligence on how companies’ supply chains worked.

“Progress is being made, but it’s not being made fast enough,” Yiannas said.

The FDA is now tracking sales and stock rates of baby formula. He said he’s talked to formula companies that say they have ramped up production, even though they might have cut back on the number of varieties of product they offer.

The FDA said Tuesday that it has also done a study to better understand what led to the recall of infant formula at the Abbott plant. The agency had conducted a routine surveillance inspection at the plant in September 2021 and even then found problems like standing water and inadequate handwashing among employees.

Abbott is facing additional investigations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice as well as lawsuits from customers.

Yiannas told the House committee Tuesday that one strategy to head off similar shutdowns would be to require manufacturers to report Cronobacter bacteria found in its products. Currently, only the Abbott plant in Michigan is required to report the bacteria as part of the consent decree that allowed it to reopen.

The FDA said in November that it would like Cronobacter infections added to the CDC’s list of national notifiable diseases, which would require doctors to report cases to public health officials so the CDC and the FDA could keep better track of infections. Only two states have such a reporting requirement now.

[ad_2]

Source link

March 28, 2023
The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

[ad_1]

Press play to listen to this article

Voiced by artificial intelligence.

LONDON — After four months of intense talks (and plenty of squabbling before that), the EU and U.K. have a deal to resolve their long-running post-Brexit trade row over Northern Ireland.

But as U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak works to sell the so-called “Windsor framework” on the Northern Ireland protocol to Brexiteers and unionists, lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel and of the Irish Sea are getting to grips with the details.

From paperwork to plants, let POLITICO walk you through the new agreement, asking: Who has given ground, and how exactly will the deal thrashed out by EU and U.K. negotiators aim to keep the bloc’s prized single market secure?

Customs paperwork and checks

For businesses taking part in an expanded “trusted trader scheme,” the Windsor framework aims to considerably cut customs paperwork and checks on goods moving from Great Britain but destined to stay in Northern Ireland.

These goods will pass through a “green lane” requiring minimal paperwork and be labeled “Not for EU,” while those heading for the EU single market in the Republic of Ireland will undergo full EU customs checks in Northern Ireland’s ports under a “red lane.”

Traders in the green lane will only need to complete a single, digitized certificate per truck movement, rather than multiple forms per load.

Sunak has already claimed that this means “any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” — deeply controversial among Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians — has now been “removed.”

However, it’s by no means a total end to Irish Sea red tape. An EU official said that although the deal delivers a “dramatic reduction” in the number of physical food safety checks, for example, there will still be some — those seen as “essential” to avoid the risk of goods entering the single market.

These checks will be based on risk assessments and intelligence, and aimed at preventing smuggling and criminality.

U.K. public health and safety standards will meanwhile apply to all retail food and drink within the U.K. internal market. British rules on public health, marketing, organics, labeling, genetic modification, and drinks such as wines, spirits and mineral waters will apply in Northern Ireland. This will remove more than 60 EU food and drink rules in the original protocol, which were detailed in more than 1,000 pages of legislation.

Supermarkets, wholesalers, hospitality and food producers are likely to welcome the new arrangements. Many had stopped supplying to Northern Ireland because the cost of filling out hundreds of certificates for each consignment was deemed too high for a market as small as Northern Ireland.

Export declarations have been removed for the vast majority of goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.

The EU’s safeguards: While offering to drastically reduce the volume of checks carried out, the EU has toughened its criteria to become a trusted trader under the expanded scheme. The EU will now have access to databases tracking shipments of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in real time. The system was tested through the winter, helping build trust in Brussels, and is being fed with data from traders and U.K. authorities. The European Commission will be able to suspend part or all of these trade easements if the U.K. fails to comply with the new rules.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will consult with businesses in the “coming months” before implementing the new rules. The green lane will come into force this fall. Labels for meat, meat products and minimally-processed dairy products such as fresh milk will come into force from October 1, 2024. All relevant products will be marked by July 1, 2025. “Shelf-stable” products like bread and pasta will not be labeled.

Governance

A key plank of the deal is the bid to address complaints by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — currently boycotting the power-sharing assembly in the region in opposition to the protocol — that lawmakers there did not have a say in the imposition of new EU rules in the region.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the Commission will have to give the U.K. government notice of future EU regulations intended to apply in Northern Ireland. According to Sunak, Stormont will be given a new power to “pull an emergency brake on changes to EU goods rules” based on “cross-community consent.”

Under this mechanism, the U.K. government will be able to suspend the application in Northern Ireland of an incoming piece of EU law at the request of at least 30 members of the assembly — a third of them. But if unionist parties in Northern Ireland want to trigger the new “Stormont brake,” they must first return to the power-sharing institutions which they abandoned last May. The EU and the U.K. could subsequently agree to apply such a rule in a meeting of the Joint Committee, which oversees the protocol.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this new tool remains an emergency mechanism that hopefully will not need to be used. A second EU official said it would be triggered “under the most exceptional circumstances and as a matter of last resort in a well-defined process” set out in a unilateral declaration by the U.K. These include that the rules have a “significant and lasting impact on the everyday lives” of people in the region.

If the EU disagrees with the U.K.’s trigger of the Stormont brake, the two would resolve the issue through independent arbitration, instead of involving the Court of Justice of the EU.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s courts will consider disputes over the application of EU rules in the region, and judges could decide whether to consult the CJEU on how to interpret them. In a key concession, the Commission has agreed not to unilaterally refer a case to the CJEU, although it retains the power to do so.

The EU’s safeguards: The CJEU will remain the “sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law” and will have the “final say” on EU single market disputes, von der Leyen stressed. Whether Brexiteers and the DUP are willing to accept that remains the million-dollar question.

Tax, state aid and EU rules

The U.K. government will now be able to set rules in areas such as VAT and state aid that will also apply in Northern Ireland — two major wins for Sunak that were rejected by the Commission in previous rounds of negotiations with other U.K. prime ministers.

It will, Sunak was at pains to point out Monday, allow Westminster to pass on a cut in alcohol duty that previously passed Northern Ireland by.

But London has had to give up on its idea of establishing a dual-regulatory mechanism that would have allowed Northern Ireland businesses to choose whether they would follow EU or British rules when manufacturing goods, depending on whether they intended to sell them in the EU single market or in the U.K. The whole idea was deemed by Brussels as impossible to police.

The EU’s safeguards: Northern Irish businesses producing goods for the U.K. internal market will only have to follow “less than 3 percent” of EU single market rules, a U.K. official said. But the nature of these regulations remains unclear, and there will be increased market surveillance and enforcement by U.K. authorities to try and reassure the EU.

The timeline: The U.K. government will be able to exercise these powers as soon as the Windsor framework comes into force.

Parcels

The EU and the U.K. have agreed to scrap customs processes for parcels being sent between consumers in Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Parcels sent between businesses will now move through the new green lane, as is the case for other goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland. That should allow them to be monitored, but remove the need to undergo international customs procedures. Parcel operators will share commercial data with the U.K.’s tax authority, HMRC, in a bid to reduce risks to the EU single market.

Timeline: These new arrangements will take effect September 2024.

Pets

Residents in Great Britain will be able to take their dogs, cats and ferrets to Northern Ireland without having to fulfill a requirement for a rabies vaccine, tapeworm treatment and other checks.

Pets traveling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and back will not be required to have any documentation, declarations, checks or health treatments.

The EU’s safeguards: Microchipped pets will be able to travel with a life-long pet travel document issued for free by the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Pet owners will tick a box in their travel booking acknowledging they accept the scheme rules and will not move their pet into the EU.

The timeline: The new rules will take effect fall 2023.

Medicines

Drugs approved for use by the U.K.’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland, “at the same time and under the same conditions” as in the U.K., von der Leyen said.

Businesses will need to secure approval for a U.K.-wide license from the MHRA to supply medicines to Northern Ireland, rather than having to go through the European Medicines Agency. The agreement removes any EU Falsified Medicines Directive packaging, labeling and barcode requirements for medicines. This means manufacturers will be able to produce a single medicines pack design for the whole of the U.K., including Northern Ireland.

Drugs being shipped into Northern Ireland from Great Britain will be freed of customs paperwork, checks and duties, with traders only being required to provide ordinary commercial information.

The EU’s safeguards: Medicines traveling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will do so via the new green lane, which will have monitoring to protect the single market built in.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will engage with the medicines industry soon on these changes.

Plants

The deal lifts the protocol’s ban on seed potatoes entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, and its prohibition on trees and shrubs deemed of “high risk” for the EU single market. This will enable garden centers and other businesses in Northern Ireland to sell 11 native species to Great Britain and some from other regions.

The Windsor framework also removes sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on all these plants, and ditches red tape on their shipment into Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Supplying businesses will have to obtain a Northern Ireland plant health label, which will be the same as the plant passport already required within Great Britain, but with the addition of the words “for use in the U.K. only” and a QR code linking to the rules.

The timeline: The new scheme and the lifting of the bans will all come into force in the fall.

[ad_2]

Cristina Gallardo

Source link

February 21, 2023
Should You Skip Dark Chocolate This Valentine’s Day?
[ad_1]

Feb. 14, 2023 — Dark chocolate is rich. It’s intense. Some believe it’s an aphrodisiac. Plus, it has numerous proven health benefits. A box of smooth, luscious bonbons seems like just the thing to give your Valentine. But recent headlines may have you rethinking that sweet, sexy gift. Here’s what you should know.

Towards the end of last year, Consumer Reports announced they’d tested 28 different dark chocolate bars — and found lead and cadmium in every one of them.

“I was devastated,” says Taryn FitzGerald. The Brooklyn-based artist and healer has been enjoying dark chocolate for years and enjoys a “tiny little square” each night. “Dark chocolate is one of my passions. It has a lot of health benefits.”

What the Report Said

The presence of cadmium and lead in dark chocolate isn’t news. Environmental health watchdog group As You Sow sued a group of chocolate makers over it several years ago. As part of the settlement, researchers studied how heavy metals contaminate cacao beans, dark chocolate’s main ingredient. Their report came out in August of last year. It found that cadmium enters the beans from the soil where they grow, while lead contamination occurs during chocolate processing.

Consumer Reports wanted to test the current in-store reality and provide new details.

“There are always new products, or reformulation of food products,” says Jim Rogers, PhD, Consumer Reports’ director of food safety research. “We might think we know a lot about food — that may or may not be true.”

The organization tested bars from big companies like Dove, Hershey’s, and Trader Joe’s as well as smaller ones like Tony’s Chocolonely and Mast Brothers, some grown conventionally and some organic. There are no federal limits for lead and cadmium content in food, so they set their threshold at California’s maximum allowable dose level for each.

“We use what we consider health protective standards,” Rogers says. “We always say no level of lead is safe, right? We want that to be as close to zero as possible in all food products.”

Testing looked at how much of these metals would be found in a single, 1-ounce serving. Of the 28 bars tested, Consumer Reports found that 23 provide a potentially harmful dose of at least one.

Eight bars had more than 100% of the allowable limit for cadmium, 10 surpassed the level for lead, and another five exceeded both. Some had more than twice the maximum amount of one metal or the other. For instance, a one-ounce square of Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate 85% Cocoa — the bar FitzGerald ate every night for years — contains 166% of the allowable limit for lead and 80% for cadmium.

Consumer Reports’ “safer choices” list includes just five bars with levels below 100% of both metals. None were completely lead- or cadmium-free.

The National Confectioners Association issued a statement in response to the findings: “The products cited in this study are in compliance with strict quality and safety requirements, and the levels provided to us by Consumer Reports testing are well under the limits established by our settlement.”

The Health Risks of Heavy Metals

Both cadmium and lead are naturally occurring elements found in soil and elsewhere in the environment. But just because they’re natural, it doesn’t mean they’re good for you.

“Some heavy metals really don’t have a function in your body. They don’t need to be there, and some of them accumulate,” says Katarzyna Kordas, PhD, asssociate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health. “These metals are not a joke. We want to have as little of them as possible in our environment, which includes food.”

Once absorbed, cadmium stays in your body for decades. It’s known to cause cancer, and it can cause kidney damage and weaken your bones. Among other things, lead targets your respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, your nervous system, and your kidneys.

The accumulation of these metals in your body is what makes them so dangerous. And dark chocolate is far from the only source we eat. The FDA’s Total Diet Study monitors both nutrients and contaminants in thousands of foods. Researchers found cadmium in 61% of the samples tested, and lead in 15%.
Because cadmium is in soil, some of the highest food concentrations appear in plants, like spinach and root vegetables. Lead tends to enter the food chain during manufacturing, so it shows up in things like baby food and sandwich cookies. It’s virtually impossible to avoid these two metals completely.

“I suspect all foods have this stuff,” says Marion Nestle, PhD, who studies and writes about our food systems. “When they do test, they find heavy metals in astonishing proportions. It’s like with pesticides — everyone has them.”

The challenge, then, is to limit your exposure.

One obvious solution would be to give up dark chocolate (and spinach) entirely, no matter how many other benefits it offers. But nobody’s saying you should cut out all food known to have cadmium or lead. That might backfire.

“The risk of eliminating a food that’s high in nutrients,” Kordas says, “could potentially be as bad as eating something that has some contaminants.”
Chocolatiers Can Reduce Heavy Metals

Because cadmium and lead get into chocolate in different ways, no single solution will address the problem. Instead, experts recommend a handful of steps cacao growers and chocolate makers can take, both right away and in the future.

To reduce cadmium, which cacao plants absorb from the soil:

Purchase beans with lower levels. Soil contamination varies by region and even by farm, with some Latin American countries having the highest levels and African countries the lowest. Chocolate makers can choose to buy beans from areas with less contamination.

Blend bean harvests. If a chocolatier combines cacao from different regions with varying levels of contamination, it moderates the overall levels. Some chocolate makers already do this. One of them, Tazo, has a bar on Consumer Reports “safer choices” list.

Add balancing substances to the soil. If growers change the makeup of the soil itself, that can make it harder for plants to absorb cadmium.

For lead, which can contaminate cacao beans at several points during harvesting and manufacturing, the changes may be easier to undertake — some could show results within a year of implementation. They focus on reducing the beans’ exposure to lead along the journey from soil to store.
How to Choose Safer Chocolate

It should be obvious by now: You don’t have to remove dark chocolate from your life, though you may choose to. Every person’s risk is different, based on your health history and what else you eat. Experts do, however, recommend that pregnant people and children avoid dark chocolate.

Here’s what you can do to lower your exposure:

Eat less chocolate. If you don’t want to give it up, just don’t make dark chocolate an everyday thing. “We think that our findings and other findings are important enough to make recommendations of reducing your consumption of dark chocolates,” Rogers says.

Variety, variety, variety. Just as manufacturers can reduce risk by mixing bean harvests, you can protect yourself by eating different brands and types of chocolate. Dark chocolates with lower percentages of cacao, in the 65-70% range, seem to have lower levels of cadmium and lead. Milk chocolate uses even less cacao, which means diminished amounts of heavy metals. “Never eat the same chocolate over and over,” Nestle says. “This is true for every food — the more variation you have in what you eat, the more likely you are to get the nutrients you need and avoid what’s not good for you.”

Boost your iron and calcium. Your body absorbs cadmium in the same way it does iron and calcium, two metals you actually need. If your diet doesn’t provide enough of them, it can let more cadmium enter your system. “One reason the CDC recommends a diet rich in calcium and iron is that it’s one way to prevent the accumulation of lead in children,” Kordas says.

Become an informed consumer. If you’re concerned about your risk, Rogers suggests reaching out to your favorite chocolate makers. Ask what their own testing shows. “Good companies will know what’s going on with their product,” he says.
FitzGerald hasn’t eaten her favorite chocolate since Consumer Reports’ research came out. She’s glad to know she might not have to stop enjoying her nightly treat altogether.

“I’m going to start exploring other brands,” she says, “and also, just see how I do without chocolate.”
[ad_2]

Source link
February 14, 2023
More than 400 products including breakfast sandwiches and fruit cups recalled due to possible Listeria contamination | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

More than 400 food products sold under dozens of brand names were recalled due to possible Listeria contamination, the US Food and Drug Administration announced Friday.

The recall by Fresh Ideation Food Group LLC includes ready-to-eat sandwiches, salads, yogurts, wraps and other products sold in nine states and Washington, DC, from January 24 through January 30.

The Baltimore company said Friday that no illnesses have been reported so far.

“The recall was initiated after the company’s environmental samples tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes,” Fresh Ideation Food Group said in its recall announcement.

Eating Listeria-contaminated food can cause a serious infection that can lead to symptoms including fever, headache, diarrhea and vomiting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older, and people with weakened immune systems, according to the CDC. “An estimated 1,600 people get listeriosis each year, and about 260 die,” the agency says.

The recalled foods were distributed in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia, according to the FDA.

The products – which included items like bacon, egg and cheddar muffins, breakfast croissants, tuna and chicken sandwiches, and fruit cups – were sold in stores, vending machines and by transportation providers, according to the company.

“All recalled products have a Fresh Creative Cuisine label and/or identifier on the bottom of the label with the Fresh Creative Cuisine name and a fresh through or sell through date ranging from January 31, 2023 through February 6, 2023,” the company said.

[ad_2]

Source link

February 6, 2023
Expiration Dates Are Meaningless

[ad_1]

For refrigerators across America, the passing of Thanksgiving promises a major purge. The good stuff is the first to go: the mashed potatoes, the buttery remains of stuffing, breakfast-worthy cold pie. But what’s that in the distance, huddled gloomily behind the leftovers? There lie the marginalized relics of pre-Thanksgiving grocery runs. Heavy cream, a few days past its sell-by date. A desolate bag of spinach whose label says it went bad on Sunday. Bread so hard you wonder if it’s from last Thanksgiving.

The alimentarily unthinking, myself included, tend to move right past expiration dates. Last week, I considered the contents of a petite container in the bowels of my fridge that had transcended its best-by date by six weeks. Did I dare eat a peach yogurt? I sure did, and it was great. In most households, old items don’t stand a chance. It makes sense for people to be wary of expired food, which can occasionally be vile and incite a frenzied dash to the toilet, but food scientists have been telling us for years—if not decades—that expiration dates are mostly useless when it comes to food safety. Indeed, an enormous portion of what we deem trash is perfectly fine to eat: The food-waste nonprofit ReFED estimated that 305 million pounds of food would be needlessly discarded this Thanksgiving.

Expiration dates, it seems, are hard to quit. But if there were ever a moment to wean ourselves off the habit of throwing out “expired” but perfectly fine items because of excessive caution, it is now. Food waste has long been a huge climate issue—rotting food’s annual emissions in the U.S. approximate that of 42 coal-fired power plants—and with inflation’s brutal toll on grocery bills, it’s also a problem for your wallet. People throw away roughly $1,300 a year in wasted food, Zach Conrad, an assistant professor of food systems at William and Mary, told me. In this economy? The only things we should be tossing are expiration dates themselves.

Expiration dates, part of a sprawling family of labels that includes the easily confused siblings “best before,” “sell by,” and “best if used by,” have long muddled our conception of what is edible. They do so by insinuating that food has a definitive point of no return, past which it is dead, kaput, expired—and you might be, too, if you dare eat it. If only food were as simple as that.

The problem is that most expiration dates convey only information about an item’s quality. With the exception of infant formula, where they really do refer to expiration, dates generally represent a manufacturer’s best estimate of how long food is optimally fresh and tasty, though what this actually means varies widely, not least because there is no federal oversight over labeling. Milk in Idaho, for example, can be “sold by” grocery stores more than 10 days later than in neighboring Montana, though the interim makes no difference in terms of quality. Some states, such as New York and Tennessee, don’t require labels at all.

Date labels have been this haphazard since they arose in the 1970s. At the time, most Americans had begun to rely on grocery stores to get their food—and on manufacturers to know about its freshness. Now “the large majority of consumers think that these [labels] are related to safety,” Emily Broad Leib, a Harvard Law Professor and the founding director of its Food Law and Policy Clinic, told me. A study she co-authored in 2019 found that 84 percent of Americans at least occasionally throw out food close to the date listed on the package. But quality and safety are two very different things. Plenty of products can be edible, if not tasty, long past their expiration date. Safety, to food experts, refers to an item’s ability to cause the kind of food poisoning that sends people to the hospital. It’s “no joke,” Roni Neff, a food-waste expert at Johns Hopkins University, told me.

Consider milk, which is among the most-wasted foods in the world. Milk that has already soured or curdled can—get this—still be perfectly safe to consume. (In fact, it makes for fluffy pancakes and biscuits and … skin-softening face masks.) “If you take a sip of that milk, you’re not going to end up with a foodborne illness,” Broad Leib said, adding that milk is one of the safest foods on the market because pasteurization kills all of the germs. Her rule of thumb for other refrigerated items is that anything destined for the stove or oven is safe past its expiration date, so long as it doesn’t smell or look odd. In industry speak, cooking is a “kill step”—one that destroys harmful interlopers—if done correctly. And then there is the pantry, an Eden of forever-stable food. Generally, dry goods never become unsafe, even if their flavor dulls. “You’re not taking your life into your hands if you’re eating a stale cracker or cereal,” said Broad Leib.

Of course it would just be easier if labels were geared toward safety, but for the majority of food, the factors are too complex to sum up in a single date. Food is considered unsafe if it carries pathogens such as listeria, E. coli, or salmonella that can cause foodborne illness. These sneak into food through contamination, like when E. coli–tainted water is used to grow romaine lettuce. Proper storage, which means temperatures colder than 40 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter than 140 degrees Fahrenheit, inhibits their growth (except for listeria, which is particularly scary because it can thrive during refrigeration). It would be extremely difficult for a label to reflect all of this information, especially given that unsafe storage and contamination tend to occur after purchase, in hot car trunks and on unsanitized countertops. But as long as food doesn’t carry these germs to begin with, pathogens won’t suddenly appear the moment the clock strikes midnight on the expiration date. “They’re not spontaneous. Your crackers aren’t, like, contracting salmonella from the shelf,” said Broad Leib.

There is, however, one category of food that should be labeled. Sometimes referred to as “foods pregnant women should avoid,” it includes certain ready-to-eat products such as deli meats, raw fish, sprouted vegetables, and unpasteurized milk and cheese, Brian Roe, a professor at Ohio State University’s Food Innovation Center, told me. These require extra caution because they can carry listeria, which is invisible to the senses, and are usually served cold—that is, they don’t go through a kill step before serving. Experts I spoke with agreed that high-risk foods should be identified as such, because there’s no way to tell if they’ve become unsafe. As things stand, the date label is the only information available, and it is “not helping people protect themselves from that handful of foods,” said Broad Leib. To overcome this setback, efforts are under way in the Senate and the House to replace all date labels with two phrases: best if used by to denote quality and use by for safety.

But it’s one thing to know expiration dates are bogus and another to live accordingly. In America, dates have become a tradition we can’t escape, Neff said, adding that the stickler of each household usually gets to set the rules. And even for more adventurous eaters, date labels serve a purpose: They’re a tool for calibrating judgment, or merely for providing the comfort of a reference point. “There’s something about seeing a number there that we think tells us something that gives us a sense of security,” Neff said. Manufacturers, meanwhile, maintain date labels because they don’t want to risk consumers buying products past their prime, even if they are safe and still (mostly) tasty.

Although there’s no perfect way to know whether food is safe or not, there are better ways than expiration dates to tell. The adage “When in doubt, throw it out” doesn’t cut it anymore, said Neff; if you’re not sure, just look it up. Good tools are available online: She recommends FoodKeeper, an app developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which lets users look up roughly how long food lasts. The Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook, by the food-waste pioneer Dana Gunders, gives detailed practical advice, such as scraping a half-inch below blue-green mold on hard cheese to safely recover the rest. Leftovers require slightly more caution, noted Broad Leib, because reheating, transferring between containers, and frequent touching with utensils (which, admit it, have been in your mouth) introduces more risk for contamination; her recommendation is to eat them within three to five days, and reheat them well—to a pathogen-killing internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. And if doing so proves tedious, consider Roe’s take on the old saying: “When in doubt, cover it with panko, fry it up, and give it to your kids.”

Yet for most foods, one tactic reigns supreme: the smell test. Your senses can give you most of the information you need. “If something smells off, you know,” said Broad Leib. Humans evolved disgust because it taught us to avoid the stench of pathogen-tainted food. But because most people are out of practice, they struggle to tell good from bad or don’t trust their senses. To be fair, it can be hard to discern whether weird smells are coming from the milk or the carton. To restore the food knowledge that has been lost since Americans shifted away from agriculture, all of the experts I spoke with supported the revival of home-economics classes—albeit with different branding and less sexism. Teaching students how to handle perishable food means teaching them what perished looks and smells like. Adults can learn this at home, of course, by opening that milk carton and daring to sniff deeply. It may be the first sniff of the rest of your life.

It’s unlikely that we’ll ever return en masse to the pre-1970s idyll of purchasing food directly from farmers or growing it ourselves. Americans are “several generations removed now from agriculture and food production, so we don’t know our food as well as they once did,” Jackie Suggitt, the director of capital, innovation, and engagement at ReFED, told me. A smell rebellion, if you will, can’t restore our severed relationship with food, but hey, it’s a start. The lonely items lingering in one’s post-Thanksgiving fridge may be one inhale away from renewed relevance. If I deigned to sniff that “expired” heavy cream, I might be delighted to encounter a future garnish for pumpkin pie. And what is wilted spinach anyway but a can of artichokes away from dip?

[ad_2]

Yasmin Tayag

Source link

November 30, 2022
Green Day Produce recalls enoki mushroom packages due to possible health risk | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Green Day Produce is recalling its enoki mushroom packages sold between September and October because they could be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes – the bacteria that causes Listeria infections, according to a statement on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

The enoki mushrooms, a product of Korea, were packed in 7.05 oz clear plastic and distributed nationwide to distributors and retail stores.

The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development discovered the potential for contamination after analyzing a retail sample. Although no illnesses have been reported so far, the product is no longer being distributed, the company said in the statement.

Listeria is a serious infection and can sometimes be fatal in young children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems.

Even healthy people can get sick, but with short-term symptoms like high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

An estimated 1,600 people get Listeria infections each year, and about 260 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Customers who have bought the product are being “urged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund,” the statement added.

[ad_2]

Source link

November 19, 2022
5 things to know for Nov. 10: Midterms, Tropical storm, Ukraine, Marijuana, Listeria | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Election officials cautiously went into the midterms this week bracing for the possibility of harassment and hostility at some polling places. Luckily, voting went smoothly across the US – even after two years that election-deniers bragged that they would flood the polls with observers to find fraud.

Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

(You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

Control of Congress remains undetermined as results continue to trickle in from Senate races in Arizona and Nevada. Georgia’s contest is also heading to a runoff on December 6 after neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright. In the House, it could be days until a full picture emerges as votes are still being counted in states like California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. Although Republicans are inching toward a slim majority in the House, President Joe Biden called the midterm vote “a good day for democracy” and praised Democrats’ efforts to stave off resounding GOP wins. “While any seat lost is painful… Democrats had a strong night,” he said.

Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just south of Vero Beach, Florida, early this morning, packing winds of 75 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. While it has weakened to a tropical storm, Nicole is expected to lash the state with heavy rain and storm surge for the next several hours. Nicole’s colossal path has already caused power outages for nearly 110,000 customers and has prompted the closures of many schools, colleges and universities as well as the cancellation of hundreds of flights and the shuttering of amusement parks. Additionally, some residents evacuated their homes after they were deemed unsafe and at risk of collapse due to the storm’s impact. You can track the storm’s path here.

CNN reporter shows scene in Florida as Nicole weakens after landfall

Russia has ordered its troops to retreat from the key city of Kherson, the only regional capital it has captured since start of its war in Ukraine. This is a dramatic setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Ukrainian forces approach the city from two directions. The withdrawal “demonstrates the courage, the determination, the commitment of Ukrainian armed forces and also the importance of the continued support” of the West, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg told CNN. This comes as a top US general said Russia has suffered more than 100,000 killed and wounded soldiers as a result of the invasion – and Ukraine is probably looking at similar numbers.

Big blow to Putin as Russia orders to withdraw from Kherson

Ballot measures that will legalize marijuana are expected to pass in two states and fail in three others, CNN projects, as momentum has grown nationwide to push for lifting penalties once associated with cannabis. Voters in Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota rejected measures that would have allowed certain amounts of cannabis possession and recreational consumption for people 21 and older. CNN projects Maryland and Missouri will approve measures to legalize recreational marijuana use. In Maryland specifically, individuals who were previously convicted of cannabis possession and intent to distribute will also be able to apply for record expungement. Recreational use of marijuana is currently legal in 19 states – along with Washington, DC.

The CDC issued a warning Wednesday about a deadly listeria outbreak in six states that has been linked to contaminated deli meat and cheese. People at high risk of severe illness from listeria infection – such as pregnant people, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems – should not eat meat or cheese from any deli counter without first reheating it “steaming hot,” the CDC said in a statement. At least one death was reported in Maryland and 16 people have been infected, according to reports from six states. If you have recently purchased deli cheese or meat, the agency recommends a careful cleaning of your refrigerator – and any containers or surfaces the meat or cheese may have touched – with hot, soapy water.

What is listeria?

01:20

– Source:
CNN

Heat shield that could land humans on Mars is heading to space today

NASA said this inflatable heat shield will hitch a ride to space today in the hope that it could eventually assist with human travel to other planets.

Where you can pick up a classic Thanksgiving meal

If you don’t feel like basting a turkey for hours on end this year, check out these restaurant chains and supermarkets that are offering take-out options.

The lottery is preying on the poor, critics say

Many lotto players this week had fun dreaming about the microscopic chance of winning a $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot. Critics, however, are pointing to the flaws of a lottery system they say unfairly targets poor people.

Jennifer Aniston opens up about failed IVF and has ‘zero regrets’

“I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it,” Aniston said. Read about her difficult IVF journey that made her the person she is today.

Popular crypto entrepreneur loses 94% of his wealth in a single day

After Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed this week, Bloomberg said he may find himself off of their billionaires list within days.

12

That’s how many female governors the US will have in 2023, setting a new record for the nation. While the number still represents a small fraction of the top executives across the 50 states, it beats the previous record of nine female governors serving concurrently in 2004, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

“Maybe this is a dumb decision, but we’ll see.”

– Elon Musk, backing his plan to offer blue check marks to Twitter users who agree to pay $8 a month – a strategy that has been marred by uncertainty and abrupt changes. During a Twitter Spaces session on Wednesday, Musk pleaded with advertisers to keep using his platform to “see how things evolve.” Twitter currently appears to be battling a wave of celebrity and corporate impersonators on its platform who have quickly gamed the company’s new paid verification system.

Hurricane Nicole makes landfall as winter strikes Upper Midwest

01:40

– Source:
CNN

Check your local forecast here>>>

iPhone sound effect (acapella)

Human iPhone sound effects

This a cappella group has mastered the art of singing iPhone ringtones and alert chimes! (Click here to view)

[ad_2]

Source link

November 10, 2022
Nestlé Issues Nationwide Toll House Cookie Dough Recall

[ad_1]

Oct. 20, 2022 – A variety of Toll House cookie dough is being voluntarily recalled by Nestlé USA.

The product, which is sold throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, is being recalled “due to the potential presence of white plastic pieces,” according to a notice posted on the FDA website.

“While no illnesses or injuries have been reported, we immediately took action out of an abundance of caution after a small number of consumers contacted Nestlé USA about this issue,” the company said in a news release.

The variety of cookie dough specifically being recalled is called Toll House Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Fudge Filling. Affected products were produced between June and September. The UPC code on the back of recalled packages is 050000429912.

If you have one of these products at home, you can take it back to the store for a refund or replacement. Anyone with questions may call Nestlé USA at 800-681-1676 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.

No other Nestlé Toll House products are impacted by the recall.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 20, 2022
Red Sneakers for Oakley 3rd Annual Memorial Soccer Tournament

[ad_1]

Kids and their families gather to raise awareness about the dangers of food allergies

Press Release
–

updated: Nov 26, 2018

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., November 26, 2018 (Newswire.com)
–
The Red Sneakers for Oakley nonprofit organization is hosting their 3rd annual soccer tournament at Oxbridge Academy on Dec. 2 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. The friendly tournament for kids ages 4-18 is in memory of Oakley Debbs, a local Rosarian Academy student who passed away in 2016. Families are invited to attend and enjoy entertainment, food, friendship, and soccer games by age group.

Red Sneakers for Oakley was established by Robert and Merrill Debbs after the death of their 11-year-old son Oakley due to a fatal allergic reaction to nuts. Oakley loved his red sneakers and the family decided to use them as a powerful symbol for increased education and awareness among communities of people with food allergies, but also people who don’t have them. 1 in every 12 kids in the U.S. suffers from a food allergy.

This child of mine, he was a rock star, he was a good, good kid. And always in my heart of hearts, I knew that he would make a difference in his life, I just didn’t know it would be after he passed away. So that’s a big part of my driving force – the legacy of Oakley.

Merrill Debbs, Oakley’s Mom and co-founder of Red Sneakers for Oakley

Oakley suffered from both asthma and an allergy to nuts, and the Debbs believe they were ill prepared to recognize the signs of anaphylaxis, the acute multi-organ life-threatening reaction to allergens.

“This child of mine, he was a rock star, he was a good, good kid. And always in my heart of hearts, I knew that he would make a difference in his life, I just didn’t know it would be after he passed away. So that’s a big part of my driving force – the legacy of Oakley,” says Merrill Debbs, Oakley’s Mom and co-founder of Red Sneakers for Oakley.

Since its establishment, Red Sneakers for Oakley has gained national exposure through supporters wearing red sneakers and has launched a multi-pronged approach to enable its mission and mobilize people to take action. They promote awareness through social media, school programs, community events, allergy sensitive food initiatives, and more.

Sponsors of the soccer tournament include Bolay, the Burns Family, Converse, Enjoy Life, Oxbridge Academy, PDQ, Regency Party Rentals, and Rich’s Ice Cream.

Registration is $35 for ages 4-9 and $50 for ages 10-18. Volunteers and donations also make a difference. To sign up, visit www.redsneakers.org/shop or call (561) 714-1390.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Melinda Grenz, Red Sneakers for Oakley
Soccer@Redsneakers.org or 561-714-1390

Source: Red Sneakers for Oakley

[ad_2]

Source link

November 26, 2018