FDA News

A Working And Rigorous FDA = Good Economy

12:34 am EST March 6th, 2009 | News | 3 Comments

Think about it this way. If the FDA had done its job with that peanut plant, people wouldn’t be scared that peanut butter can kill them, then purchases of peanut butter wouldn’t drop off then the peanut industry wouldn’t have to spend p.r. cash on telling people peanuts are safe and instead could do what their core business is: selling peanuts.

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Salmonella Peanuts Had Metal Fragments In Them. Yep, We Should Totally Let The Free Market Handle It.

5:02 pm EST January 30th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Jeez Louise.

The government acknowledged Friday that a shipment of peanuts from the plant linked to a salmonella outbreak contained a “filthy, putrid or decomposed substance” later identified as metal fragments. The shipment was returned to the U.S. in April, months earlier than reflected in a federal tracking database.

The rejected shipment — coming across a bridge between New York and Canada — was logged by the Food and Drug Administration but never tested by federal inspectors, according to government records. The computer records show a mid-September date, just weeks before the earliest signs of the outbreak.

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“The FDA failing to follow up after this incident, does that mean that products that are not good enough for a foreign country are still good enough for the USA?” asked Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “That’s a double standard that has deadly consequences for our citizens.”

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Remember, We Should Always Let Companies Police Themselves

12:04 pm EST January 28th, 2009 | News | 12 Comments

The free market fairies will take care of everything.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said at least 12 times over the past two years the Peanut Corporation of America has knowingly sold products that had tested positive for salmonella.

The FDA also claimed the company did nothing to improve its manufacturing and sanitation practices after salmonella was found in its plant, and that is a clear violation of the law.

Consumer advocates are outraged at the new revelations.

‘This kind of lab-shopping is absolutely shocking, and it really shows that the FDA’s program is inadequate to protect American consumers,’ Sarah Klein said, who works for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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America Takes Up Stem Cell Research

10:05 am EST January 23rd, 2009 | News | 19 Comments

Science is back, under Obama.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for the world’s first study of human embryonic stem cell therapy, Geron Corp said on Friday.

The California biotechnology company plans to start a clinical trial to try to use the stem cells to regrow nerve tissue in patients with acute spinal cord injury.

“This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics — one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration of organ and tissue function achieved by the injection of healthy replacement cells,” Geron Chief Executive Thomas Okarma said in a statement.

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