October 18, 2007· Pesticide use spurs free speech flap ·
US food safety warnings hit decade low ·
Lettuce roots lure salmonella – study ·
Assessing global potential for biodiesel ·
EU organic apples yield healthier worms Pesticide use spurs free speech flap(latimes.com) – If the state and federal governments get
their way, night-flying planes will soon resume dousing the Monterey Peninsula
with a moth-targeting pesticide, before they move on to other areas of Northern
California. US food safety warnings hit decade low(Bloomberg) -- The number of Food and Drug Administration
warnings was a quarter of the comparable 2001 total, public records analyzed by
Bloomberg showed. The agency cut its inspection staff 28 percent from four
years ago and visited fewer of the 329,000 facilities in the In the past 13 months, there have been
nationwide recalls of spinach contaminated with E.coli
and peanut butter tainted with salmonella. The FDA issued warnings that seafood
from ``The potential for greater risk is there,''
Mark McClellan, who was FDA commissioner under President George W. Bush from
2002 to 2004, said in an interview. ``Limited resources are stretching the
agency too far'' after managers diverted staff to drugs and medical devices. The FDA regulates about 80 percent of Agency officials defend their record and say
a plan, soon to be announced, will strengthen safety. Lawmakers have called for
revamping the FDA or creating an agency that would take over all food
regulation. `Toothless' Agency ``You've got an agency that is toothless,''
Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who leads a House panel
responsible for FDA funding, said in an interview. The 72 warning letters this year through
August compared with a 10-year high of 289 during the comparable period in
2001. For all of 2006, the agency sent 126 food-safety warnings, down 70
percent from 421 in 2001. The analysis of warning letters excluded
citations for improper marketing claims, failure to include allergens and other
violations not directly related to safety. The FDA uses the letters to signal
possible enforcement action after inspectors find violations such as unsanitary
conditions and potentially dangerous additives. The number of warnings declined partly
because Bush appointees barred field offices from issuing letters until they
are approved by the FDA's general counsel, said William K. Hubbard, an FDA
associate commissioner for 14 years before he retired in 2005. `Didn't Like Warning Letters' ``The Bush folks didn't like warning letters,''
Hubbard said. Daniel E. Troy, the former FDA general
counsel who put the policy into place, said the purpose was to give the letters
legal review and make them more credible, not to reduce the number. FDA food regulators did 7,783 inspections in
the 2006 fiscal year, the fewest since 2000, according to the FDA. The total
includes cosmetic and dietary supplement makers, though the agency says it does
few of those. For the fiscal year ended in September, the
agency planned 5,600 inspections of domestic food operations whose products
pose a ``high risk,'' down 24 percent from 2003, according to FDA documents.
The agency wouldn't disclose how many inspections were set for the 136,000 The number of inspectors who focus on food,
cosmetics and dietary supplements dropped to 625 in fiscal 2007 from 874 in
2003, according to the FDA. FDA officials say the Targeting Biggest Risks The total may have decreased because the FDA
is targeting the biggest risks rather than requiring that all companies be
inspected, Zawisza said. Producers also are correcting
violations, requiring fewer repeat visits, she said. Senior agency officials
wouldn't comment for this story. Typical of warning letters sent by the FDA
this year was one to closely held Southwind Foods Co.
based in The FDA hasn't received a response and plans
another inspection next month, agency spokesman Michael Herndon said in an
e-mail. Sebastiano Galletti,
the company's president, didn't return phone calls. Deaths, Hospitalizations Food-borne illnesses may cause as many as
5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations each year in the There aren't authoritative statistics
documenting whether more people are getting sick from food regulated by the
FDA. State reports since the late 1990s indicate an increase in outbreaks,
according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. ``When we see a decline in inspections
together with increasing outbreaks, it's clear the government isn't providing
adequate deterrence,'' said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food
safety director for the Washington-based center. The number of known outbreaks may have
increased because of more reporting to health authorities, not because food is
more dangerous, said Craig Henry, senior vice president of the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, a trade group in To contact the reporter on this story: Justin
Blum in Lettuce roots lure salmonella(Health Day via
Yahoo) – Salmonella, a bacteria that causes tens of
thousands of cases of foodborne illness each year,
may be especially attracted to lettuce by the prospect of something sweet. The bug is apparently enticed by a sugar-like
substance lying in the leafy green's roots, say a team
of Dutch scientists. They believe the results may help one day
find new ways to prevent infection with the potentially deadly germ, but others
are not so sure. "It's a laboratory study and it can't be
generalized to anything else," said Dr. Douglas L. Hurley, a professor of
internal medicine at the Texas A&M Health Science
Center College of Medicine and an infectious disease doctor at Scott &
White. "It can't be generalized to lettuce growing in a field by a long
shot." "The great majority of human outbreaks
of salmonellosis come from chicken or eggs, so the
question is what kind of public health import would this have," added
Philip Alcabes, an epidemiologist and an associate
professor at the School of Health Sciences of Hunter College, City University
of New York in Indeed, salmonella
infection usually comes from eating contaminated ground beef, eggs and
pork and, increasingly, poultry, rather than produce. Some 40,000 cases of salmonellosis
are reported in the But foodborne illness
in general, especially from E. coli,
another bacteria, is being increasingly traced back to produce. And in March,
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued
voluntary guidelines for food industry processors to minimize contamination of
ready-to-eat produce. Reporting online Oct. 11 in The
International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal, a
team at In this paper, the researchers reveal that
salmonella bacteria move towards the roots of the lettuce, apparently attracted
by a sugar-like carbon source located there. When the bacteria
gets close, the molecule triggers a genetic signal which, in turn,
triggers bacterial reproduction Assessing global potential for biodiesel(Science Daily) – What
do the countries of The ease of manufacturing biodiesel from
vegetable oils and animal fats has made it one of the most promising, near-term
alternatives to fossil fuels. Seeking to understand which nations are best
positioned today to enter the burgeoning biodiesel market, researchers Matt Johnston
and Tracey Holloway of the Nelson Institute's Center for Sustainability and the
Global Environment (SAGE) ranked 226 countries according to their potential to
make large volumes of biodiesel at low cost. Reported online Oct. 17 in Environmental Science
and Technology, the analysis uncovered many of the usual suspects, including
the But the researchers say the study's true
motivation was to identify developing countries that already export significant
amounts of vegetable oil for profit, but may not have considered refining it
into biodiesel. By exporting biodiesel - a higher value commodity - these
countries could improve their trade balances, says "A lot of these countries don't have any
petroleum resources and so they're having to import
petroleum," he says. "At the same time, they're exporting vegetable
oil that they could be turning into biodiesel and using domestically." Overall, the study ranked "As long as they're profitable and have
large volumes of vegetable oils, all the countries on our list - even if they
aren't on our top ten list - they could do this," he says. The idea for the analysis first struck "The price disparity was just
incredible," says At the same time, many agencies - chief among
them the United Nations - have raised concerns about the biofuel industry's
possible impact on the world's poor, as vegetable oils, now used for food, are
increasingly diverted to fuel production. Rampant growth of biofuels could also
negatively affect the environment; a soaring demand for palm oil, for example,
has already led to deforestation in By highlighting the places in the world where
biodiesel development will likely happen, Johnston and Holloway hope their
analysis will help people foresee these problems and make plans to mitigate
them. "We're not saying, 'There's all this
potential out there, go get it,'" says Of all the vegetable oils and animal fats
examined in the study, soybean and palm oil were by far the most common. In
fact, the world's top five soybean and palm oil
producers - Based on current export volumes of vegetable
oil from 119 countries, "We're not suggesting that all exported
vegetable oil should be converted into biodiesel, because that would
fundamentally upset the food supply," says Holloway. "We're looking
at this more from each individual country's perspective: They're already
exporting one thing, could they be exporting something else?" Because the study employed data from online,
public sources - primarily the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations Statistics Division - Holloway points out that any country could repeat
the calculations or do its own analysis of the biodiesel opportunity. And she
and Johnston hope they will. "I'd love to see some of these
development opportunities come to fruition for some of these countries," A map is available at: http://www.sage.wisc.edu/energy/ Note: This story has been adapted from
material provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. EU organic apples yield healthier worms(Science Daily) – Insects
can catch more than a cold from certain viruses. Some viruses can be lethal to
pest species - turning their insides to soup - without harming beneficial
insects or other organisms. Hence they are used as an environmentally friendly
means of biological crop protection worldwide. The proverbial worm in the apple, the codling
moth caterpillar, has been controlled in European orchards for years with a baculovirus called codling moth granulovirus
(CpGV). But in southwest However, as reported recently in Science
magazine, a single gene in the codling moth can make it 100,000 times less
susceptible to the granulovirus. This highlights the
need to anticipate the risk of resistance in pest control, not only for
insecticides but also viruses. The discovery was reported by a team of
insect virologists and geneticists from the Agricultural Service Centre of
Rhineland-Palatinate (DLR Rheinpfalz), the German
Federal Biological Research Centre (BBA Darmstadt), the The sex chromosomes in humans are called X
and Y, with XX females and XY males. This is reversed in moths, where the sex
chromosomes are called Z and W, with ZZ males and ZW females. The researchers
found that the gene for granulovirus resistance
occurs on the Z chromosome. Female caterpillars need only a single copy of the
resistance gene to be nearly 100,000 times less susceptible to granulovirus infection. They stay healthy and survive to
reproduce, when most others have been killed. Sons from matings
between these highly resistant females and susceptible males carry a virus
resistance gene on just one of their two Z chromosomes. "Our research has
shown that such males can pupate normally if they encounter a low dose of the
virus" reports Dr. Johannes Jehle of the DLR Rheinpfalz. They survive and pass on their resistance gene
to the next generation. "In later generations, there are also males
carrying the resistance gene on both Z chromosomes, and these can survive even
higher virus concentrations" explains the leader of the research team. "This means of inheritance offers the
quickest possible way for the insects to evolve resistance" says Prof.
David Heckel of the MPICE. "If the apple grower
increases virus applications to try to control the damage caused by the resistant
population, the opposite results. Selection for resistance accelerates and the
frequency of the gene on the Z-chromosome increases even faster in the
population." Jehle and his colleagues are planning for the future in
response to this alarming result. In parallel with the inheritance studies,
several new isolates of the codling moth granulovirus
have been screened since 2006 for their ability to overcome the resistance. In
2007, extensive field tests in Reference: S. Asser-Kaiser, E. Fritsch, K. Undorf-Spahn, J. Kienzle, K. E. Eberle, N. A. Gund, A. Reineke, C. P. W. Zebitz, D. G. Heckel, J. Huber, J. A. Jehle Rapid emergence of baculovirus
resistance in codling moth due to dominant, sex-linked inheritance, Science,
September 28, 2007 Note: This story
has been adapted from material provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. End Transmission |
|||||||||