Resolving The Worsening Crisis At The United States Food And Drug Administration

These egregious vignettes, however, pale in epidemiological comparison with harm done by the manufacturing of neurotoxic and carcinogenic food additives in general, which is rapidly destroying health in hundreds of nations. My own theory is that melamine, not normally very toxic, became poisonous when mixed with cyanuric acid in the bottom of the vats in China, a theory also advanced by Richard Goldstein at the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. Food flavoring workers in California were recently diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening form of lung disease, also known as popcorn workers lung, particularly in workers at microwave popcorn factories; the disease destroys the lungs. Since 2001,studies have shown links between the disease and a chemical used in artificial butter flavor called diacetyl. Flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million as a result of lawsuits by people sick with popcorn workers lung over the past five years. One death from the disease has been confirmed among workers; how many have gone undetected in the general population? Lawsuits against Pfizer and Zoloft have resulted in the FDA recently requiring antidepressant manufacturers to add suicide warnings to their products, a belated public relations gesture. Even the normally unflappable Dr. Andrew Von Eschenbach, Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, very recently appointed a new Assistant Commissioner for Food Safety and Security, Dr. David Acheson, M.D. A 1980 graduate of University of London Medical School, Acheson trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases then taught at Tufts Medical Center and researched food borne pathogens, focusing on Shiga toxin producing E.coli. He also participated in FDA discussions about the fact that heating french fries to 425 degrees transforms the starch into the carcinogenic acrylamide. (In 2003 and 2004, then Attorney General of California Lockyer tried to officially label french fries as containing a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, over the objections of the fast food lobby and the FDA Commissioner at that time, later forced to step down indisgrace for not disclosing a stock he owned as a conflict of interest. Perhaps the present California AG, Jerry Brown, will continue this vital battle for consumer protection). Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat and senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, blasted Acheson's appointment as a mere "reshuffling of management" doing little to prevent future outbreaks. "The agency should have a sense of the barriers, gaps and most critical needs in our food safety system," DeLauro said. "What is needed to adequately protect our food supply is strong enforcement authority that would require mandatory recalls of contaminated products and a commitment from agency management to follow-through with safety investigations." This pet food thing has shown people, including people at the very highest levels of the administration, that something needs to be fixed." "If this isn't a wakeup call, the people are so asleep they are catatonic," stated William Hubbard, Associate Director of FDA from 1991 to 2005. "As long as the system depends on government inspectors to detect problems and pull dangerous foods, it's a failed system," said Michael Taylor former Director of the Agriculture Departments Food Safety Service. Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, who served under both Bush I and Clinton, maintained that major improvements were needed from Congress, the industry and the FDA. "The food safety system in this country is broken," Kessler told the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Kessler said the FDA needed more money for food safety efforts and should make it a higher priority. "Food safety can't be delegated to secondtier management within the agency, and the fact is that food is a second-tier priority within the FDA," Kessler said. http://apostille.us/news/resolving_the_worsening_crisis_at_the_united_states_food_and_drug_administration.shtml

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