The Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead to a lab-grown chicken product from GOOD Meat, and the company announced that chef José Andrés will serve it in one of his DC restaurants soon. But not so fast — the product has to be cleared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture first. GOOD Meat has been serving its lab-grown chicken in high-end Singapore restaurants since 2020.
This is the second synthetic chicken product cleared by the FDA. The first was from UPSIDE Foods back in November. There may be as many as 99 companies trying to develop cell-cultured meat. While the market for these food products is uncertain, this is a great time to be selling the bioreactors in which the stuff is “grown” and the nutrients that “feed” it.
More:
“A second lab-grown chicken producer got a step closer to hitting the shelves,” Julia Malleck, Quartz
“Lab-grown meat moves closer to American dinner plates,” By Leah Douglas, Reuters
“An analysis by the publication Sciencehas ‘found widespread after-the-fact payments or research support’ from pharmaceutical companies to expert officials who advised the Food and Drug Administration to approve those companies’ drugs.”
— “Pharma companies pay FDA advisers after drugs are approved,” Bob Herman, Axios
More:
“Hidden conflicts? Pharma payments to FDA advisers after drug approvals spark ethical concerns,” Charles Piller and Jia You, Science
“Majority of doctors who oversee FDA drug approval receive payments from companies they monitor, report shows,” Clark Mindock, The Independent
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“In recent years the term ‘evaporated cane juice’ has appeared as an ingredient on food labels, most commonly to declare the presence of sweeteners derived from the fluid extract of sugar cane. However … FDA’s view is that such sweeteners should not be declared on food labels as ‘evaporated cane juice’ because that term does not accurately describe the basic nature of the food and its characterizing properties (i.e., that the ingredients are sugars or syrups) …. Moreover, the use of ‘juice’ in the name of a product that is essentially sugar is confusingly similar to the more common use of the term ‘juice’ — ‘the aqueous liquid expressed or extracted from one or more fruits or vegetables, purees of the edible portions of one or more fruits or vegetables, or any concentrates of such liquid or puree’ (21 CFR 120.1(a)). Thus, the term ‘evaporated cane juice’ is false or misleading because it suggests that the sweetener is ‘juice’ or is made from ‘juice’ and does not reveal that its basic nature and characterizing properties are those of a sugar.”
— Guidance for Industry: Ingredients Declared as Evaporated Cane Juice, Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling Food Labeling and Standards Staff, HFS-820 Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
More:
“Evaporated Cane Juice? Puh-leeze. Just Call It Sugar, FDA Says,” Dan Charles, NPR
“Evaporated cane juice: Sugar by any other name…” Marion Nestle, Food Politics
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The U.S. government has allowed prescription drug hucksters to come between patients and their doctors for over a dozen years now. Television commercials give consumers important medical information by using images of flowers, butterflies, smiling faces, puppies, and kittens. They also enrich our culture with the sheer poetry of those lists of side effects.
But don’t blame the GSA, blame the FDA. Food and Drug Administration rules allow products to be marked “0 grams trans fat” if the amount per serving is below 0.5 grams. So if you make food out of artery-clogging trans fatty acids, just make the servings smaller and you can label those packages “0 grams trans fat,” too.
More:
“The Girl Scout Cookie lie: No trans-fats,” The Week.
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President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law yesterday. The legislation improves the security and safety of America’s food supply, allowing the Food and Drug Administration to protect us from foodborne illness and contaminated comestibles, both foreign and domestic. That’s something to everyone’s taste.
Unless they’re Republican. The GOP is defending the rights of toxic bacteria to have access to your digestive tract. To do that, Republican lawmakers will try to starve the FDA of the funds needed to enforce effective food safety regulation.
The Congressional Budget Office puts the expense of enforcing the law at $1.4 billion over five years, with most costs offset by fees, but spending must still be approved by the majority-Republican House. The cost of treating foodborne illness instead of preventing it: $152 billion a year. Costs over five years: $1.4 billion if we enforce the law, $760 billion if we don’t.
Each year 48 million Americans get sick from eating something; 128,000 of them are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. Every year. Apparently, that’s OK with the GOP.
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Barry Estabrook points out that Senate legislation mandating more regulation and inspection of US food growers and processors ignores the globalization of our nation’s food supply:
“There are about 190,000 registered foreign facilities that produce food for export to the United States. Of those, only 200 (roughly 1 out of every 1,000) were inspected by the FDA.”
See the Government Accountability Office report on this issue: “FDA Could Strengthen Oversight of Imported Food by Improving Enforcement and Seeking Additional Authorities,” Statement of Lisa Shames, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, GAO, May 6, 2010.
An FDA recall of contaminated acid-hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) has led to scrutiny of this misunderstood ingredient of industrial food products. HVP sounds like a means of adding nourishment to manufactured foodstuffs, but it is actually a flavor-enhancer, a neuro-exciter. Active ingredient: glutamic acid. You may recognize one of its salts, monosodium glutamate (MSG).
Note: Bugs and rats get sick from eating tainted peanut butter, too, so refresh this page if they stop moving. FDA is probably testing a “Refresh Patch” for use on humans. Keen!
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