Archives for the 'fda' tag
FDA Hearts Cheerios
Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal=Lipitor? The FDA says yes, the editorial board of The Washington Times says no:
The latest verdict from the Food and Drug Administration is that Cheerios is a drug. Parents, then, must be drug pushers.
The FDA sent a warning to Cheerios maker General Mills Inc. that it is in serious violation of federal rules.
“Based on claims made on your product’s label, we have determined that your Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease” the FDA letter said. “[Cheerios] may not be legally marketed with the above claims in the United States without an approved new drug application.”
The kicker? The FDA doesn’t actually contest Cheerios’ cholesterol-lowering claims. This is all just bureaucratic turf defense. No one contends that General Mills is lying, or that people are being misled—well, no one except the folks at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who exercised their usual rhetorical restraint and called Cheerios “21st-century version of snake oil.” But someone at the FDA got a bee in their bonnet (maybe that bee that advertises Honey Nut Cheerios?) and now General Mills will have to spend many, many thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to defend their right to publish a true claim on their own cereal boxes.
Raw Milk a Tasty Treat?
Friend and food blogger Jacob Grier has a great piece in Reason on the waning legality of raw milk.
[Pasteurized] milk resulted in the loss of seasonality and taste. Cooking milk introduces new flavors, some of them unpleasant. And since pasteurization kills bacteria indiscriminately, many raw milk devotees argue that the process robs them of probiotics, bacteria that they say build their immune systems and aid digestion. As McAfee put it to me, “kids are germ magnets.” Exposing them to raw milk, he argues, is good for them. Similarly, the testimonials section on the website of the Campaign for Real Milk, a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation that aims to overturn legal barriers to unpasteurized milk, is full of quotes from people writing that the product has cured them of everything from indigestion to autism. While some of these claims are obviously far-fetched, it’s clear that many raw milk drinkers believe they benefit from introducing a thriving population of bacteria into their bodies.
[...]
When I recently visited dairywoman Kitty Hockman-Nicholas at Hedgebrook Farms in Winchester, Virginia, I saw nothing dangerous or diabolical. Kitty showed me around the farm, introduced her cows by name, and demonstrated her milking process. It would have been illegal for Kitty to sell me raw milk—she provides it for people who buy into “cow shares” and thus technically own the cows from which they get their dairy—but she kindly sent me home with some as a gift.
My trip to the farm provided delightful insight into the origins of one of our most essential foods. I didn’t enjoy any miraculous health effects after drinking it, but the taste was smooth and creamy, with none of the processed aftertaste I now can’t help noticing in store-bought milk. As I sipped my unpasteurized beverage, I reflected on the absurdity of the situation: If Kitty were to offer the same experience to others for a profit, the government could forcibly put her out of business.
Campaign for Raw Milk here. Time on raw milk outlaws here. Raw milk opponent Stephen Barrett on why raw milk doesn’t do a body good here.
Regulations Don’t Beget Safer Foods
On Friday, NPR-voiced podcaster Caleb Brown of the Cato Institute interviewed Peter Van Doren of Cato’s Regulation** magazine about the myth of food safety. As Van Doren puts it:
The problem is that government overpromises… The left points out [USDA & FDA are] underfunded and don’t have enough inspectors to actually do a good job. And the left is correct. It’s true.
But that’s a chronic problem. Instead of the answer to that being, “Oh, we could add more money to the budget and somehow solve the problem,” if you do the math, you’d find out you can’t have enough inspectors to actually adequately provide assurances of the sort many voters want.
More here. Cato podcast index here.
The Federal Times on food safety issues here. The U.S. government’s own food safety website — which, as the image above shows, proves the feds aren’t wasting a blessed penny of their food-safety inspection budget on web design — here.
**I’m guessing that Regulation is the only magazine published by a think tank that boasts a former Dancing with the Stars contestant as a columnist.
I Prefer My Rat Fur on a Plate
Quote of the day (paraphrasing of the day, technically) from my food & drug law professor earlier today:
I bet you could probably eat a bowl of rat fur and not get sick.
The FDA regulations that led the prof. to utter those words here and here. Proof I’m not the first person who saw the word “rat” and immediately thought of Andrew Zimmern here.
