September 19, 2011 In a story posted on September 15, the Associated Press reports that in response to the Corn Refiners Association’s original request to use the term “corn syrup,” Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, told colleagues he was uncomfortable with changing the name and suggested that allowing it would deprive consumers of important information and invite…
CFH
September 13, 2011 By James J. Gormley, Vice President and Senior Policy Advisor, Citizens for Health According to a July 7, 2011 report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality, government spending on healthcare has been on the rise since at least 1990 in the world’s leading economies. U.S. Medicare spending is…
By James J. Gormley In our August 23rd post, we alerted you to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) draft guidance on “new” dietary ingredients. We recommended that our 100,000+ members ask the FDA to withdraw the guidance and to not adopt the policies underpinning the interpretation behind this “guidance” in its review and enforcement activities. In the meantime,…
By James Gormley, Senior Policy Advisor, Citizens for Health On January 4th, 2011, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law. It included a number of requirements, including one that the FDA issue industry guidance as to when companies need to submit New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notifications to the agency and when they do not, and about 186…
Washington, D.C. – Citizen-activists are being urged by Citizens for Health, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, and the EMF advocacy group, ElectromagneticHealth.org, to contact their representatives in Congress to request the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to update its obsolete cell tower safety regulations. The FCC’s cell tower safety regulations need to be revised immediately because: 1) WHO has classified…
By James J. Gormley From American Chronicle In June 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the final rule on Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs), which, according to Nutraingredients-usa.com, is regarded by many as “the most important regulatory development for the dietary supplement industry in over a decade.” Vasilos Frankos, Ph.D, outgoing director of the FDA’s Division of…
Passage of this bill won’t change much unless the bill is funded. In this economic environment, it will be difficult to get the $1.4 billion required to implement this bill without some revenue generator, which this bill does not include. There has already been talk from Republicans in the House that they will not fund the bill. The government is currently under a continuing resolution (CR) which expires on March 4. So one of the first challenges for the new Congress is how they handle the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Therefore, it is unlikely that anyone will get an increase in this environment. Some lobbying from states is also anticipated since they’ll be able to seek a variance from the produce safety standards as long as they can show that they have procedures in place to reach the same goals.
I ask you to tell President Obama to please veto this bill; we will work together on coming up with an alternative bill in 2011 that will be signature-worthy.
Please ask President Obama to veto this legislation so that consumers — not industry lobbyists and agri-business cronies — can develop a true food safety bill that will improve this country’s food-safety system, not bog it down with paperwork, smoke and mirrors.
It is time for Americans who want net neutrality to speak up and tell the FCC what it needs, which is to support President Obama’s vision of a truly free, not an almost free, internet.