
Food Safety
Do you know what's in your food?
With all of the problems in our food system, it can be hard to find the information we need to make smart choices about the food we eat. Use this page to keep up to date on food safety issues, including pesticides, aspartame, flouridation, irraditation, toxic sludge, mad cow disease, and more.
Mary Beth Kirkham hadn’t studied microplastics when she was invited to co-edit a new book about microplastics in the environment—but something stood out to her about the existing research. “I had read in the literature that . . . cadmium and other toxic trace elements [are] increased when we have these particulate plastics in the soil.
Read moreThe Health and Human Services Department has agreed to an industry-backed plan to effectively strip the FDA of oversight of certain genetically modified animals — the latest instance of Trump political appointees overriding the agency's scientists.
Read moreOrganic Consumers Association (OCA) and Animal Equality (AE), jointly with Champion Petfoods USA Inc. (CPF), today announced that they have resolved two consumer protection actions filed by AE and OCA on July 24, 2020 and August 10, 2020, respectively, against CPF in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
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The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today sued The Kraft Heinz Company (“Kraft”) for misleading consumers by marketing and advertising cheese products containing milk from cows administered recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) — also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH) — as “natural.”
The action was filed on behalf of OCA by Richman Law & Policy in D.C. Superior Court
Read moreThe Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today announced that the District of Columbia Superior Court rejected Smithfield’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit OCA brought against the pork producer in May 2020 under the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA).
“We are pleased that the court agrees that Smithfield, a producer of industrial factory farm pork,
Read moreChen Yun’s pigs stopped eating, then developed a fever. Within a week, all 10,000 on his farm in Jiangxi, in southeast China, had died of African swine fever (ASF). In 2018-19 the virus affected every province and led to the slaughter of half the country’s pigs.
Read moreSan Francisco, Calif.—Today, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated core environmental laws in approving the genetically engineered salmon. The Court ruled that FDA ignored the serious environmental consequences of approving genetically engineered salmon and the full extent of plans to grow and commercialize the salmon in the U.S. and around the world, violating
Read moreThis year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to two scientists―Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna―“who transformed an obscure bacterial immune mechanism, commonly called CRISPR, into a tool that can simply and cheaply edit the genomes of everything from wheat to mosquitoes to humans.”
According to the Nobel Prize committee the “genetic scissors” of CRISPR “have taken the life sciences into a new epoch and, in many ways, are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.”
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Chlorpyrifos insecticides were introduced by Dow Chemical in 1965 and have been used widely in agricultural settings. Commonly known as the active ingredient in the brand names Dursban and Lorsban, chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate insecticide, acaricide and miticide used primarily to control foliage and soil-borne insect pests on a variety of food and feed crops. Products come in liquid form as well as granules, powders, and water-soluble packets, and may be applied by either ground or aerial equipment.
Chlorpyrifos
Read moreAn Impossible milk, which is still in development, would be nothing like soy or other plant-based milks, promised CEO Pat Brown. Instead, the company wants the beverage to taste like the real thing. Any such drink is a long way from shelves, if it ever makes it to the market.
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