The 20 Most Spine-Chilling Food Issues in 2010

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For consumers, the events surrounding food production and regulation in the year 2010 has been a tempestuous ride. The FDA issued a total of 226 food recalls and safety alerts during the last year of the decade.

One cereal maker alone, Kellogg’s, recalled 28 million boxes of cereal contaminated with methylnaphthalene, a chemical derivative made from crude oil and coal tar, which is also a pyrolytic byproduct from the combustion of tobacco, wood, petroleum-based fuels and coal.

Back in March the company Basic Food Flavors — who offers the food industry 120 varieties of hydrolyzed vegetable protein or HVP, a food additive — announced a massive recall because of salmonella contamination. The company produces about 20 million pounds of the food additive annually. Hundreds of products were recalled involving millions of pounds of food.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) — the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe — currently has 32 active recall cases pending for 2010. The contaminated food products include but are not limited to turkey, tuna, chicken, and beef. These foods are either mislabeled, have undeclared allergens, or are contaminated with listeria, salmonella or E.coli.

After a food establishment completes a recall, the record is removed from the current recall list and added to the archives. For the year 2010, there are currently 36 archived cases totaling 783,323 pounds of contaminated beef, chicken and other food products.

Also in 2010, we covered a story about a group of high-ranking corporate purchasing managers from some of the most well-known and largest food companies in North America involved in racketeering, bribery, conspiracy, price fixing, bid rigging, and falsifying laboratory tests. The scope of corruption reached more than 55 companies, and included PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay, Kraft Foods, B&G Foods, the maker of Ortega Mexican foods, Safeway, and SK Foods LP, one of the nation’s largest tomato processors.

And as The Food Safety Bill was passed in a late night, last minute vote, with not a single U.S. Senator objecting, despite the Tester Amendment being incorrectly and misleadingly sold to the critical public as “exempting” small farms and food producers from the entirety of the “heavy-handed regulations” of the Food Safety Modernization Act, we leaned that FDA was involved in a cover-up regarding GM Salmon by knowingly withholding a Federal Biological Opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prohibiting the use of transgenic salmon in open-water net pens.

Additionally, we’ve included what we believe to be among twenty of the most important developments involving food production and regulation that either transpired in the year 2010, or was reported in 2010.

20. US Cattle Cloned from Dead Cows

Some US cloned cattle have been created from the cells of dead animals. And since the U.S. approved cloning over two years ago, you may have already grilled a cloned steak from beef cells extracted from a dead carcass. More…

19. With guns drawn, cops raid raw milk food club

With guns drawn, four officers blazed into Rawesome Foods in Venice, California, and raided the walk-in cooler to find jugs of raw milk. The real reason why the FDA opposes raw milk is because Big Dairy opposes raw milk. More…

18. Monsanto Takes GM Food Fight to Supreme Court

Monsanto wants the nation’s highest court to reverse a 2007 California US District Court ruling that the USDA illegally approved Monsanto’s GE alfalfa without carrying out a full Environmental Impact Statement. The ruling was upheld in 2009 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa. More…

17. FDA says Walnuts and Cherries are Drugs

The FDA sent a Warning Letter to the president and CEO of Diamond Foods claiming the company’s walnuts are drug products in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. How Orwellian is that? More…

16. Canada Poised to OK Transgenic Pork for Dinner

The world’s first transgenic animals — pigs genetically modified with a snippet of mouse DNA introduced into their chromosomes — are one bureaucratic step closer to becoming pork meat on Canadian dinner tables. More…

15. Drug-resistant Bacteria Regularly Found in U.S. Meat

Federal studies report finding drug-resistant bacteria in U.S. meat on a regular basis. The federal report claims that for the last twenty years there has been widespread agricultural use of an array of antibiotics that includes Cipro, an antibiotic that is no longer effective 80 percent of the time on deadly human infections it previously had treated. More…

14. Cattle Feed, What They Don’t Want You to Know

Cattle are fattened on chicken manure. And not only are many of America’s cattle herds fed chicken manure, they’re also fed euthanized dogs and cats, dead skunks, rats, and raccoons found on U.S. highways. More…

13. Veggie Burgers Made With Gasoline By-product

Unless a soy-based vegetarian burger is certified organic with the green USDA Organic seal on the package, it almost certainly contains hexane-extracted soy protein. Hexane is a neurotoxin and a petroleum by-product of gasoline refining. More…

12. Tainted Beef Rejected by Mexico is Sold to Americans

Mexican authorities rejected a shipment of U.S. beef because it contained copper levels in excess of Mexican standards. That same beef was sold on the U.S. market. More…

11. The Hazards of Genetically Modified Soy

In a study expected to be published in July 2010, a Russian biologist determined third generation hamsters fed genetically modified soy were unable to produce offspring. Genetically modified organism (GMO) studies on mice and rats have linked GM products to allergic reactions, liver problems, sterility, disease, reproductive problems, infant mortality and excessive cell growth, which can lead to cancer. More…

10. Tertiary butylhydroquinone in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets

McDonald’s chicken McNuggets served in the U.S. contain tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a petroleum-based product, and dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent also used in Silly Putty. More…

9. 12 Year-old McDonald’s Burger Shows No Sign of Decay

Nutrition consultant Karen Hanrahan kept a McDonald’s hamburger for 12 years. She purchased the McDonald’s hamburger in 1996 using a coupon and posted her claim on her website in 2008. More…

8. Say Goodbye to the Gulf Seafood Industry

Even before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, generations of U.S. shrimpers faced financial ruin because of cheap, frozen imported shrimp glutting the American market. Foreign shrimp fisherman aren’t restrained from the bycatch laws American shrimp fishermen are required to follow. More…

7. How the BP Oil Spill Will Affect Bluefin Tuna

In the past 40 years, Bluefin tuna populations have declined by 80 percent due to industrialized overfishing. In April, Barbara Block, a Stanford University marine biologist noted that the giant bluefin only show up for about a month to spawn, and April is the time they show up. Block says many of the tuna go exactly to the region where the Deepwater spill is centered because it’s one of the preferred breeding areas. More…

6. The Truth Behind the Egg Scandal

With over a half-billion eggs recalled because of salmonella contamination traced to Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, once again the federal agencies responsible for regulating and safeguarding America’s food supply have demonstrated that their real aim is to defend and protect the interests of huge agribusinesses. More…

5. FDA to Approve GM Salmon Despite Strong Opposition

Despite strong public opposition, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon. More…



4. New Food Bill May Render Family and Organic Farms Extinct

Although the Food Safety Modernization Act was crafted to improve overall food safety, the bill will force small local farms and co-ops out of business, thus consolidating the control our nation’s food supply among a small and powerful cabal consisting of a handful of corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, and Tyson. More…

3. Obama appoints Pesticide lobbyist

President Obama has appointed former pesticide lobbyist Islam Siddiqui, to be chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the U.S. trade representative. More…

2. FDA Cover-up Regarding GM Salmon

FDA was involved in a cover-up regarding GM Salmon by knowingly withholding a Federal Biological Opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prohibiting the use of transgenic salmon in open-water net pens. More…

1. Three Monsanto GM Corn Varieties Toxic to Mammals

Researchers concluded that three GMOs are not safe enough to be distributed commercially because the kidneys and liver in rats displayed toxicity levels when exposed to all three GM corn varieties. More…

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