Opinions
Opinions
| Date | Opinions | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 28, 2013 |
''Congress Shouldn't Weaken Food Safety Laws'' "Being a Minnesotan, Jeff Almer searched for a polite term to describe how he feels about a congressional push to roll back the new food safety laws his family fought for when his elderly mother died after eating salmonella-laced peanut butter in late 2008." |
Food Safety |
| Jun 26, 2013 |
''Move Forward on Medical Device Tracking'' 'You may not yet depend on a pacemaker, defibrillator, stent, joint implant or any of the other life-changing, potentially lifesaving products made by the medical device industry. But chances are you or a family member will be a patient some day. That’s why it isn’t just the medical device industry that has a stake in the timely rollout of a long-overdue national system to better track the safety and whereabouts of devices once they’re on the market or in use." |
Drugs and Devices at the FDA |
| Jun 10, 2013 |
''For Our Kids' Sake, Food Safety Must Be a Priority'' As a pediatrician, my No. 1 concern is to keep children safe and healthy. Inside the walls of my office, I can provide services and counseling to help do just that, whether by giving an infant her first childhood vaccine, providing a mental health screening to an adolescent patient or counseling parents about how to keep their homes as safe as possible. Unfortunately, there are some threats to children's health that are beyond my control, including the food they consume. |
Food Safety |
| May 7, 2013 |
''The Senate Aims to Clean Up Compounding Pharmacies'' When a doctor sticks a needle in you, you expect that the drugs it carries won’t be tainted. But, possibly owing to a strange gray area in federal law, thousands of patients last October got injections for back pain that contained highly dangerous fungal meningitis, and dozens of them died. Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are now seeking to fix the government’s oversight of the obscure world of compounding pharmacies. The reforms they want are overdue. |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| May 6, 2013 |
''Overused Antibiotics are Becoming Ineffective'' "As a nation, we need to exercise greater care with our use of antibiotics, in both humans and animals, so that these medications remain effective in treating serious bacterial infections." |
Antibiotic Innovation, Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Apr 17, 2013 |
''It is Vital That We Monitor Antibiotic Use in Livestock'' It used to be easy to treat healthy children with common bacterial infections; a regimen of antibiotic pills could usually wipe out the disease. Today, patients might need to go home on intravenous antibiotics because oral therapies will no longer work. Antibiotic resistance is to blame. |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Apr 8, 2013 |
''Pew Report Shows Flaw in Tracing Food-Safety Lapses "Twenty-two weeks. That’s how long it took federal health officials to determine the contaminated food source after the first person was infected in a 2011 outbreak of salmonella that swept across 34 states, sickened 136 people and led to one of the largest national recalls of ground turkey." |
Food Safety |
| Apr 4, 2013 |
''Crackdown Needed on Specialty Pharmacies'' "The deaths and illnesses linked last fall to a New England pharmacy operating in the regulatory shadows as a cut-rate drug manufacturer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical public health disasters in American history." |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| Apr 3, 2013 |
''Yes, Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Can Jump from Animals to Humans'' "For decades, the meat industry has denied any problem with its reliance on routine, everyday antibiotic use for the nation's chickens, cows, and pigs. But it's a bit like a drunk denying an alcohol problem while leaning on a barstool for support. Antibiotic use on livestock farms has surged in recent years — from 20 million pounds annually in 2003 to nearly 30 million pounds in 2011." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Mar 28, 2013 |
''Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat'' "Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they’re telling us it’s getting worse." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Mar 26, 2013 |
Mr. President: Make Imported Food Safe The Obama administration has taken an important step by releasing the draft rules central to implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), but it must do more. Important draft regulations focused on the safety of imported foods are still awaiting release. These rules are especially important since about two-thirds of fruits and vegetables and 80 percent of seafood consumed in the United States come from abroad. |
Food 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 |
| Mar 5, 2013 |
"Study after study has found that the practice of feeding subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics to livestock to enhance growth is a threat to public health because it can lead to the breeding of antibiotic-resistant organisms, rendering essential drugs useless against disease-carrying organisms. Now there is alarming new evidence that unchecked antibiotic use in Chinese livestock farming has led to antibiotic-resistant genes in bacteria. China produces and uses more antibiotics than any other country, and nearly half the antibiotics it uses are fed to livestock." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Mar 4, 2013 |
''Our Antibiotics Are Less Effective; Routine Use in Farming is Cited'' "The vast majority of antibiotics developed to treat people are given to the animals people eat. Farmers add low doses to feed and water to prevent disease in crowded livestock facilities. The drugs also promote growth. A bigger cow, pig, turkey or chicken translates into more money for producers. How does this widespread use in animals affect humans? It is killing us, a growing number of scientists say." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Feb 28, 2013 |
''Antibiotics, Animals and Us'' Describing the routine use of antibiotics in meat and poultry production as a "serious threat to public health," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010 called on livestock operations to voluntarily reduce their reliance on the medications. But an FDA report this month indicates that, so far, the results are unimpressive: Antibiotic sales to livestock operations rose in 2011, rather than falling. |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| 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 |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Improving Food Safety Essential'' "The announcement earlier this month of proposed federal food safety regulations certainly took long enough — the authorizing legislation, the Food Safety Modernization Act, was passed two years ago with bipartisan support. Between then and now, the nation has seen a number of incidents (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 15 multistate outbreaks) in which thousands of people took ill, even died, because of illness carried in contaminated food." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Time to Move on New Food Rules'' "America hasn't made major changes to its food-safety laws since the 1930s, so it probably should come as no surprise that - once a decision was finally made to update them - it took two more years to generate new regulations. But the Food and Drug Administration's menu for reform is now mostly assembled, and that's welcome news. For decades, federal regulators have reacted to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses rather than working aggressively to prevent them." |
Food 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 |
| 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 15, 2013 |
''Putting a Price Tag on Safe Food'' "In addition to the 3,000 deaths it causes each year, contaminated food is very expensive. The cost of food poisoning in this country comes to $14 billion a year, according to a July 2012 study published in the Journal of Food Protection, including the medical expenses of the 128,000 who are hospitalized annually. That figure does not include the millions of dollars that each food recall costs the company involved, the legal expenses from victims' lawsuits or losses incurred by other companies when consumers hear, for example, about contaminated cantaloupes and then avoid all cantaloupes, including those that are perfectly safe." |
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| 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 11, 2013 |
''Ounces of Prevention: Health Impact Assessments Can Help Improve Public Policy, Health Outcomes''
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| Jan 11, 2013 |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production: Pew’s Response to Raymond Op-Ed In his attempt to clarify the issue of antibiotic use in meat and poultry production, Dr. Richard Raymond confuses matters. Most importantly, Dr. Raymond mischaracterizes the value of tetracyclines and the dangers of their overuse. |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| 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 |
