Opinions
Opinions
| Date | Opinions | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 24, 2012 |
''Food safety is more than about audits'' "Food safety has always been the highest priority for the people who grow, ship and sell our nation's fresh fruits and vegetables. Recognizing there is no one solution, we take a holistic approach to food safety, constantly strengthening best practices, identifying knowledge gaps, creating new guidance on growing, handling and processing, and developing new "field to fork" training programs." |
Food Hazards |
| Aug 13, 2012 |
''Food Safety Delay Puts Lives at Risk'' "It's been a year since a tragic listeria outbreak in cantaloupes began on a Colorado farm, claiming at least 30 lives and infecting nearly 150 people in the largest outbreak of foodborne illness in almost 90 years. Yet, even as we've entered another summer outbreak season, important provisions of a landmark food safety law are still not implemented." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 24, 2012 |
''Food safety auditors too tied to industry'' "The first hints of trouble came last Sept. 2. Trackers who watch for outbreaks of dangerous diseases noticed that seven people in Colorado had come down with listeriosis, a potentially fatal food-borne illness. Within two weeks, federal authorities had tracked the culprit — contaminated cantaloupe — to Jensen Farms, a small Colorado grower." |
Food Hazards |
| Apr 2, 2006 |
''Fixing The Nation's Foster Care System'' "Our nation's foster care system is far from perfect, and its casualties are vulnerable children. As a young woman who spent more than half of her life in foster care, and a judge who oversees foster care cases, we witness its impact firsthand.On average, children remain in foster care for three years, and move three times. They are separated from friends, siblings and family for long, uncertain periods of time, and can grow out of foster care without becoming part of a loving, permanent family." |
Health Topics |
| Feb 19, 2013 |
''Finding Out Who Pays Your Doctor'' "The Obama administration issued a new rule this month that requires the makers of prescription drugs and other medical products to disclose what they pay doctors for various purposes, like consulting or speaking on behalf of the manufacturer. This overdue rule adds much-needed weight to previous, more limited disclosure requirements." |
Conflicts of Interest |
| Oct 8, 2012 |
"One of the most urgent global public health problems is the increasing capability of bacteria to resist antibiotic drugs. The crisis of antimicrobial resistance is particularly acute in hospitals, where superbugs able to resist multiple drugs have spawned. More than 70 percent of the bacteria that cause hospital-related infections are already resistant to at least one type of antibacterial drug." |
Antibiotic Innovation, Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''FDA: Plain Sense is the Key for New Food Safety Guidelines'' "The new food safety guidelines proposed for the people who supply the nation's food, including farmers and manufacturers, are a good preventative step toward a healthy America." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 6, 2012 |
''FDA takes step in right direction'' "Wednesday's announcement that federal drug regulators will now require U.S. farmers and ranchers to limit their use of certain antibiotics in cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys is a long overdue positive ruling that should help reduce the growing threat that antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections pose to humans. Welcome as the edict is, it does not go far enough. Additional restrictions or, preferably, bans on their use are necessary to properly safeguard public health." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Nov 9, 2010 |
''FDA relies too much on tipoffs, not enough on drug checks'' "A drug-company whistle-blower last month pocketed $96 million -- her share of the money Medicare and Medicaid paid for tainted drugs. The fee is way too high -- employees will drop a dime for far less." |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| Mar 11, 2013 |
''FDA Must Ensure Safety of Imported Food'' "Several months ago, my life was changed forever when I fell severely ill after eating imported ricotta cheese contaminated by the dangerous bacteria Listeria. Protections in a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) law could help prevent infections, like mine, from harming other Americans. But they need to be fully implemented to help anyone." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 13, 2012 |
''Fatter cows, sicker people'' "The FDA has restricted the use of a minor antibiotic used by the meat industry. It's a small step to counter the widespread overuse of antibiotics on healthy animals, which helps create antibiotic-resistant bacteria that harms humans." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Jan 10, 2012 |
"Last week, the Food and Drug Administration took a small step toward reducing the routine use of antibiotics in livestock, a practice that creates drug-resistant pathogens and threatens the effectiveness of some antibiotics in human medicine." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| May 19, 2012 |
''Eric J. Greene: Landmark food law in political limbo?'' "When President Barack Obama last year signed a bill hailed as a milestone in food safety, he stood at an exceedingly rare intersection where persuasive majorities of businesses, policymakers and consumers wanted the same thing." |
Food Hazards |
| Jan 8, 2009 |
"While your editorial ('Delmarva travel warning,' Tuesday) made light of the dangers of driving behind trucks transporting intensively raised chickens..." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Oct 7, 2010 |
''Egg Inspections: The View From the F.D.A.'' "Contrary to your article, Food and Drug Administration inspections of the egg industry are on track." |
Food Safety |
| Nov 26, 2012 |
''Editorial: White House Dallies on Food-Safety Law'' ''The Obama administration continues to drag its feet on a landmark consumer-protection law that could have made this week's Thanksgiving feast, leftovers and snacks considerably safer to eat.'' |
Food Safety |
| Jan 11, 2013 |
Editorial: ''New FDA Food Safety Rules Are a Huge Step Forward'' "At long last, after seven frustrating and sometimes deadly decades of inaction, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has the power it needs to recall tainted foods and require common-sense safety measures for farmers and food manufacturers. But the new food safety rules announced last week won't do much good if there's no money to enforce them, and therein lies the rub." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 10, 2013 |
''Editorial: Late Better Than Never for New Food-Safety Rules'' "The Food and Drug Administration has proposed the most sweeping changes in food-safety rules in decades. The changes being made under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which became law in 2011, are long overdue and should be implemented as soon as possible." |
Food Safety |
| Mar 23, 2012 |
''Editorial: Crack down on counterfeit drugs'' Strong, national 'track and trace' system is overdue. |
Drug Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Editorial: An Unconscionable Delay'' "After two frustrating years of delay, the U.S. Food and Drug administration should soon have the power to prevent food-borne outbreaks rather than merely reacting to them." |
Food Safety |
| Jul 3, 2012 |
''Drug, device reform gets bipartisan push'' "The U.S. Supreme Court's eagerly awaited Affordable Care Act ruling unfortunately overshadowed the unusually bipartisan work underway at the U.S. Capitol last week, where Congress finalized sweeping legislation crammed with smaller-scale but still vital health reforms." |
Drug Safety, Drugs and Devices at the FDA |
| Jan 3, 2010 |
"One of the profound blessings in the age of modern medicine is that, when infection sets in, doctors can draw upon an array of antibiotics to knock the germs for a loop. Just imagine how it would have been for our ancestors, for whom a simple cut or bad tooth could mean "blood poisoning" and death." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Aug 29, 2011 |
Distribution System OK, But it Can be Exploited Drug distribution may involve many trading partners, which can make it difficult to determine the products’ sources or authenticity. Medicines are often bought and sold across state lines; moved in whole or partial lots; and repackaged or relabeled. These practices may be appropriate, but bad actors also may exploit vulnerabilities in this system. |
Drug Safety |
| Jun 26, 2012 |
''Disclosure can address doctors' conflicts of interest'' Pew Prescription Project Director Daniel Carlat opines in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Monetary relationships among doctors and drug and device companies are not inherently bad; in fact, they are crucial for advancing medical research and patient care. Yet they can also skew prescribing practices and research results. That's why transparency and education are such an elegant solution: They allow these often important relationships to exist, but only on the condition that other professionals and patients are fully informed about them." |
Medical Safety |
| Sep 2, 2010 |
''Delhi's Fake Drug Whitewash'' Counterfeit drug expert Roger Bate said that a report issued by India's Central Drug Standard Control Organization this summer indicating that less than .1% of drugs sampled in the country were fakes is flawed and contradicts well-established findings by the government and scholars that suggest the number of counterfeits is much higher. |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
