Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Today, the FDA issued inspection reports on the two egg farms involved in a recall of half a billion eggs for salmonella contamination, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. Conditions were, shall we say, less than optimal.
The inspectors found manure piles up to 8 feet high, holding doors open and giving wildlife access. "Wildlife" included live rodents, wild birds and a plague of flies, live and dead, including their larvae (maggots). "Additional problems included overflowing manure pits, improper worker sanitation and wild birds [a potential source of avian influenza] roosting around feed bins," reports the New York Times.
The investigators also found salmonella bacteria in chicken feed and in barn and walkway areas, and in water used to wash eggs at a Hillandale facility. It isn't clear, yet, which came first: the salmonella or the egg.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing two food poisoning victims, each from famous recent national outbreaks. There are many differences between them, but there are three major similarities: They provided the health departments with the samples that conclusively linked their illness to the tainted food products, they have changed their diets in similar ways to avoid food poisoning in the future, and they are upset that the government has done nothing (YET) to make our food supply safer (but hope the Senate will vote on the food safety bill soon).
Jacob Hurley accompanies his dad to testify before Congress
This is a cute kid. But, if things had gone a little bit differently, he's a cute kid who wouldn't still be here today. I spoke to his dad, Peter, who works as a policeman in Oregon. Jacob (who goes by Jake) was three years old when he got sick.
Here's to December's first cup of coffee. Is it really almost 2010 already?!
Consumer Reports brings us some disturbing news about store-bought chicken. Two-thirds of fresh, whole broilers "harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter". The amazing thing is that this is actually an improvement over their last survey in 2007.
It's time for the 2009 Holiday Ale Festival here in Portland! The event begins tomorrow and goes on through Sunday, Downtown in Pioneer Courthouse Square. If you come on the right day I might just pour you one myself! The O brings us a Q&A with one of the event's organizers.
Food stamp purchases at New York City's Greenmarkets have increased 125% over the past year.
Now these are some holiday gift ideas I can support! "The sweetest gifts of all come from your own kitchen"...
After massive and high-profile failures in Texas and Indiana, the federal government is warning states not to privatize food stamps. Now if only they would use their power to do more to dissuade same besides simply writing "strongly worded letters"...
Are urban hunting clubs the next step in the local foods movement?
A new video shot by Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife officials confirms the existence of a pack of at least 10 gray wolves in Eastern Oregon.
The Senate has been bogged down in the debate over health care reform, and Harkin said his staff is tied up working on other must-pass bills. He said he hoped to have the committee take up the bill in December, but he assured her the issue wouldn't die.
"We're going to get it done," he said.
Recent food scares linked to peanut butter and other products have spurred interest in Congress in increasing the FDA's authority. Michael Taylor, a senior adviser at the FDA, told the victims and their families that the agency was poised to tighten its regulation of foods if Congress would just pass the legislation. "The forces have come together," he said. "Society is finally ready to deal with this problem."
Harkin said he expected the committee's bill to be a modified version of legislation introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. Like the House bill, Durbin's legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority over the 80 percent of the food supply - everything but meat and poultry - that the agency regulates. The administration would be required to inspect processors more often, and processors in turn would face new regulations for controlling against pathogens.
But the Durbin bill omits a key feature of the House-passed bill: a $500 fee on processors to offset the cost of increasing the administration's budget.
Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, told Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register that he thinks this bill has less than a 50/50 chance of getting through Congress. The Grocery Manufacturers Association supported the food safety bill the House approved in June, but Faber observed, "As we get closer and closer to the [2010] election it makes it harder to move legislation."
There's a Class 1 recall of tainted ground beef - 825,769 lbs of it, from Cargill. It's tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella. That's bad. And it's not just proof that we need a better food safety system - it's also proof that we need to get the nontherapeutic antibiotics out of our factory farms.
The USDA is supposed to tell us which stores are selling (or have sold) the tainted beef, to make it easy for us to figure out if we've accidentally bought tainted beef so we don't eat it. So far, according to Bill Marler, the USDA has not given us that information. Ummm.... that's kinda important.
Yesterday's announcement by the Food Safety Working Group (FSWG) was written up in the Washington Post. Basically, they decided to have a "go-to" person for food safety at the FDA, a deputy commissioner for food safety (Michael Taylor, former Monsanto lobbyist). Aside from that, they focused on a few specific things. Salmonella in eggs and poultry, E. coli in beef (particularly ground beef), and safety for leafy greens, tomatoes, and melons. So far, the FDA already issued a new rule for eggs. The rest is all set to happen in the future. Essentially, they are leaving a very broken system in place and slapping a few band-aids on it.
Here's an interesting blog to check out. The photos (of boxes of meat covered in rat poop) are from a few years ago, but as it's been made very clear since then, no real food safety changes have yet been instituted since that time.
I've worked in a few warehouses, and I've certainly seen nasty stuff before. I've never worked in a food distribution or manufacturing facility, though. I can say, however, that food manufacturing facilities were pretty common to run across during my decade working in environmental remediation back in New Jersey. If they can't, don't or won't properly handle their wastewater discharges, it's probably a good bet that's not the only sanitary problem with the facility...
A few other recent items:
Federal "regulators" are warning people to stop using a popular line of "diet supplements", after about 2 dozen reports of "significant adverse health effects" (including one death) in people who used it. Eye-opening read, that NY Times piece -
Unlike drugs, whose manufacturers must provide safety and effectiveness data before receiving federal approval to sell the products, dietary supplements do not need prior F.D.A. sanction to go on sale. Manufacturers of dietary supplements are themselves responsible for ensuring and documenting the safety and efficacy claims of their products.
Follow the trail! Arizona spinach goes to a Wisconsin packer, then heads on to a nationwide distributor who ships the product to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. The spinach tests positive for salmonella, and is recalled. Interestingly enough, the distributor was notified of the positive test results on April 27, yet no recall was announced until April 29. Why did it take two days they wait until the third day (thanks, nycstray!) to announce to the public, especially considering that no weekends or holidays were involved?
Believe it or not, the peanut product recalls from the PCA salmonella outbreak are not over yet; and one Irvington, NJ-based distributor has been hiding (literally!) from the FDA's attempts to make contact with the company and recall their products. From a great write-up at Bill Marler's blog -
A federal official said Moradi [Westco/Westcott] "ran away and hid" when government inspectors showed up at his plant. Moradi acknowledged hiding from FDA inspectors but said it was because they had repeatedly visited him and staked out his plant, and he was frightened.
The company is Westco Fruit & Nut, operating out of a Coit Street location in Irvington, NJ. The company sent out mixed nut products and trail mix containing peanuts from PCA's Blakely, Georgia plant up until February 2009, and FDA is warning people to dispose of all products containing peanuts they may have from Westco/Westcott Fruit & Nut Company.
Westco/Westcott refused to cooperate with FDA in the recall attempt or provide any information to federal investigators, so today US marshals raided their building -
At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Marshals today executed an inspection warrant at Westco Fruit and Nuts Inc. (Westco/Westcott), an Irvington, N.J.-based company. Westco/Westcott did not provide access to distribution documents and declined to recall products after an FDA request.
There's that 'voluntary' recall system in action. I guess the 'honor system' doesn't work when some companies are still willing to put profits before health, even if it risks potentially killing people...
A new (old) cookbook being revised for Oregon's sesquicentennial will be based upon one Southern Oregon family's culinary roots going back 150 years. The pioneer sour cream pear pie sounds interesting. Generations of family poetry will also be included, like this gem from Bessie Venable Smith Johnston on a trip to an early-day supermarket - "Foods with additives, preserved to delay the rot; the more I looked, the less hungry I got." I like her poetry. :)
A great blog post on the urgent need to improve hospital food. I spent 5 weeks in a New Jersey hospital ten years ago recovering from meningitis, and the 'food' was probably one of the worst experiences I can remember from that. It isn't rocket science - better (real, whole) food is one of the keys to better health. You'd think hospitals would be a natural place to make that connection...
After news earlier this week (earlier diaries by DarrellNC and AAF) of the latest massive salmonella-related recall, with pistachios being the culprit this time; we now learn that Setton Foods, the processor which shipped the tainted pistachios, has quite a bit in common with our old friends at PCA. Apparently, it ain't just the nuts that give their chocolate extra crunch -
"Last month, New York agricultural authorities discovered nearly two dozen dead cockroaches, rodent droppings and one live cockroach on an ingredient rolling rack inside the Commack plant. It failed its state health inspection.... State inspectors went back for a visit Wednesday to swab the plant and take food samples to be tested for salmonella and other pathogens as part of the pistachio recall,... The test results are pending."
This Commack, New York plant is now the second Setton plant under investigation, along with Setton's Terra Bella, California plant from which the earlier recall was issued. A separate recall of products from the Commack plant will be coming soon -
The Commack company said in a statement last night it plans a voluntary recall soon, related to the pistachios issue. It has engaged at least three outside public relations representatives since news of the California salmonella scare broke.
And the similarities don't end there - these guys are certified organic, too. I wouldn't suggest ordering anything from that page, of course...
Salmonella Pistachios, Pepper, Peanuts, Sprouts, Eggs and Mayonnaise in Last Three Months
As a friend recently said: "You could almost make a sandwich." A nasty one at that.
Just to recap - I think we all know about the peanuts. And then there's the pistachios, the mayo, white pepper, the sprouts... I must have missed the eggs. What's the score? Humans 0; Salmonella 6?
Despite all of the different stories, it appears that the pistachios are getting all of the attention. The LA Times says that the plant that sold the pistachios to Kraft says that the salmonella didn't come from them. Meanwhile, the FDA has added a new pistachio page to its site. Marion Nestle thinks that the pistachio case shows that HACCP for all foods is a good idea.
Got any pistachios at home? Don't eat them--but don't throw them away either. The FDA is issuing this advisory after a Central Valley plant issued a recall.
A California food processing plant is voluntarily recalling up to 1 million pounds of roasted pistachio products that may have been contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday.
The nuts came from Setton Farms in Terra Bella, California, about 75 miles south of Fresno. They were largely distributed in 2,000-pound containers to food wholesalers who would then package them for resale or incorporate them as ingredients in other products, such as ice cream and trail mix.
Unlike the Peanut Corporation of America affair, an outbreak didn't trigger this recall. Rather, the recall came after Kraft found strains of salmonella during routine testing.
This could have a massive ripple effect--Setton is the second-biggest pistachio processor in the nation.
A new restaurant near the University of Texas at Arlington, which uses locally grown, organic ingredients as much as possible, has a no-set-price policy, and asks customers to discreetly pay (in an envelope) afterwards for what they thought the meal was worth. The idea is based upon an existing Salt Lake City non-profit community kitchen's model. Can it work for a commercial establishment? So far, the restaurant is coming up just short, although it's only two months old and the business itself is always a rough one.
The City of Berkeley, CA may soon transform all of its parks and open spaces into habitats for bees, in an effort to reverse the recent global decline of pollinators.
If you're in Kansas, you can vote for the best food in the state from now until March 31. Unfortunately, restaurants must be at least a decade old in order to be considered, so that rules out Lawrence's Local Burger for at least the next 7 years. I'm sure there's something else worth considering in Lawrence, though...
USDA will update its Plant Hardiness Zone Map later this year, for the first time since 1990, to reflect the climate-change induced shifts of planting zones northward.
This morning the House Energy & Commerce committee subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations held a hearing on the salmonella peanut butter outbreak. It was their 3rd in a series of three, this time focused on the companies supplied by Peanut Corporation of America and their lapse in food safety vigilance that allowed this to happen.
Opening statements, written testimony, and documents for the hearing can be found here.
(Also, let's not forget the cost of this massive recall to food banks nationwide. Great piece - promoted by JayinPortland)
With each new outbreak of foodborne illness, my colleagues and I go to bat for a new round of sick people - mostly kids and senior citizens.
At the same time, we brace ourselves for the familiar rant: We are the blood-sucking ambulance chasers who impose crippling legal costs on honest companies that have made innocent mistakes trying to feed the nation. So be it. Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Dobbs and friends can bash us all day and all night for our efforts to make companies pay the personal costs associated with their mistakes. If somebody knows a better way to get justice and compensation for injured people, I want to hear about it. But, for the record, trial lawyers like me are not the reason that screw-up companies like Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) go bankrupt. We are not the reason our Government has failed to protect its citizens.
