The Obama administration has released a report from the federal food safety working group.
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Fooducate, a San Francisco-based mobile app that allows supermarket shoppers to see an analysis of what their proposed purchasers are composed of, has been used more than 10 million times to scan food products since it was launched in January, Hemi Weingarten, the founder and CEO of the company said Tuesday on the fringes of the Partnership for a Healthier America summit in Washington. Read More...

The nation’s food safety inspection programs for meat and poultry at the Agriculture Department may be safe from budget cuts, but similar programs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are vulnerable and cutbacks at the state and local level may also endanger food safety, three key federal officials said Tuesday. Read More...

Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen announced today that the Agriculture Department will hold a public summit on pre-harvest food safety on November 9 in Washington. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will be the headliner today when the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 national, regional and state agricultural groups and their partners, launches its campaign to create a better dialogue with consumers about how food is grown in the United States. Read More...

The U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance released the results of two surveys commissioned to collect attitudes toward food and how it is grown. The surveys focused separately on the opinions, attitudes and questions consumers and farmers/ranchers have about the current and future state of how food is grown and raised in the United States.
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The Agriculture Department is scheduled to announce today that it will declare six strains of E. coli as adulterants in food, but the story broke early after USDA briefed advocates on Monday. Read More...

The Senate Appropriations Committee today approved a $19.78 billion fiscal year 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill that provides less discretionary spending than either the 2010 or 2011 bills, but left potential controversial amendments for the Senate floor even though some senators are worried that the bill will never come up as an individual piece of legislation. Read More...

The International Food & Agricultural Trade Policy Council today published two issue briefs on the impact of animal and plant health safety standards on trade. Read More...

The biggest impact of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization Act will be on the inspection of imported food, the federal official in charge of implementing the new bill and a key food safety advocate agree. Read More...

Following the release of a report critical of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s inspection of imported seafood, including catfish varieties, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Rep. Rosa De Lauro, D-Conn., have called on the government to do a better job. Read More...

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is launching a Food Day on October 24 that will be modeled after Earth Day, it announced today. Read More...

Reacting to public concern about the impact of radiation on Japanese food products, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted today that the U.S. government will carefully monitor the small amount of food imported from Japan, while the Food and Drug Administration said there is no current threat to the U.S. food supply. Read More...

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on duplicative government programs shows the need to consolidate the responsibilities of the 15 federal agencies that have jurisdiction over the nation’s food safety system into a single independent agency, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the ranking member on House Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has come under pressure from the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee to be more specific about the impact the proposed Republican budget cuts and a possible government shutdown would have on USDA’s food safety inspections, and what the loss of earmarks would mean for agricultural research. Read More...

Nearly three years after the 2008 farm bill mandated that the inspection of catfish be shifted from the Food and Drug Administration to the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS today announced a proposed rule under which it would inspect catfish. Read More...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today sent U.S. overseas missions a cable detailing plans to implement the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization Act that Congress passed in December and President Obama signed in early January. Read More...

Relatives of people killed or sickened by peanut salmonella poisoning in 2008 and 2009 today urged the Justice Department to file criminal charges against Stewart Parnell, owner of the Peanut Corporation of America, the source of the tainted peanuts and peanut products. Read More...

ATLANTA — In their first joint public appearance, the nation’s two top food safety experts told the American Farm Bureau Federation Sunday that food producers at all levels have to help improve the safety of American food, but they also reassured farmers and ranchers that they are not planning to come onto their property to conduct inspections on a frequent basis. Read More...