The nation’s new governors are now all at their posts, and most have already delivered their own “State of State” or budget messages. After last November’s election, 29 executive mansion’s are held by the GOP, 20 by Democrats, and one by an independent, the former Republican, Rhode Island’s Gov. Lincoln Chafee.
With the executive branches of 26 states now under the command of new governors, personnel changes are coming fast and furious. Food safety in state government is often spread across health, agriculture, and consumer portfolios.
Food Safety News continues today with more reports on these important state-level appointments.
Empire state’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo has nominated Buffalo native Dr. Nirav R. Shah as the 15th New York State Commissioner of Health.
Dr/ Shah earned both his medical degree and a master’s of public health at Yale University’s School of Medicine.
He takes over from Dr. Richard Daines, who sought extra taxes on soda pop to fight obesity.
The new commissioner comes to state government from Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.
Vermont’s new Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin picked Dr. Harry L. Chen to be Health Commissioner.
Dr. Chen takes over in Vermont for Dr. Wendy Davis.
Chen earned his medical degree and completed his residency at the Oregon Health Sciences University, where he served a chief resident. He then served on the faculty of the George Washington University Medical Center’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
In Vermont, he’s served as an emergency physician at the Rutland Regional Medical Center for over 20 years. He was also elected to the Vermont House of Representatives and served on its Health Care Committee. Chen has been active in health care reform.
South Dakota Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard has named Walt Bones as Secretary of Agriculture.
Bones, with his brothers and nephews, operates a dairy for 2,200 cows and raises cattle and grain on land near Parker, SD that has been in the family since 1879.
He succeeds Jon Farris, who has been South Dakota’s acting secretary of agriculture since Bill Even resigned.
SD’s Department of Agriculture has programs for plants, eggs, and dairy to protect consumers and maintain integrity of its brands.
Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has nominated Dr. Eli Avila as Secretary of Health.
Dr. Avila was chief deputy commissioner for the Suffolk County Department of Health Services where he was in charge of more than 1,600 employees and an annual budget of $400 million.
Avila is a lawyer-doctor, having earned his medical degree from the Brown University School of Medicine and his J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law. He also has a master degree in public health from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine at New York University.
Avila replaces Everette James, who left state government last October to become a Vice Chancellor at the University of Pittsburg.
Wyoming Republican Gov. Matt Mead has re-appointed Jason Fearneyhough as head of the state Department of Agriculture and appointed Casper City Manager Tom Forslund to head the state Health Department.
FearneyHough has headed up Wyoming’s Ag department for the past 18 months. Forslund’s appointment means Wyoming has an opening for a new state health officer.
Dr. Brent Sherard currently is both head department head and the state’s chief health officer. Being a city manager, and not a medical doctor, Forslund cannot be both the director and health officer.
A department spokesman said it’s likely an acting state health officer will be named from the existing staff when Dr. Sherard departs.
Wyoming was recently named as among a handful of state’s as getting an “A” from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) when it comes to identifying and investigating outbreaks of foodborne illness.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam named Julius Johnson, who has worked for the state Farm Bureau for almost four decades, as Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture.
Johnson is a Tennessee native who was a beef cattle farmer before going on to a career with the Farm Bureau, where he has been chief administrative officer for the past 15 years.
Johnson took over from former Commissioner Terry j. Oliver.
Defense lawyers from Stoel Rives are out with a fine presentation for the food industry on what the Food Safety Modernization Act is all about. One part caught my eye.
It has to do with the immediate work that lies ahead for the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
FDA will have to run 10 rulemaking processes; issue at least 10 guidance documents so industry will know what it is suppose to do; put out 13 reports; and engage in numerous other activities that will burn up time and money.
As everyone who has followed the agency knows, FDA rule making can become processes measured only by the decades they take. As a unit of the mammoth and lumbering U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, FDA is as likely to fall into a tar pit as it is to gracefully tippy toe over the obstacles it encounters.
But with the implementation of the biggest reform to hit the food side of the agency since 1938, FDA is putting on its can-do face.
Michael Taylor, no callow fellow, was using his “action” clichés at a Washington D.C. conference last week. The FDA deputy commissioner for foods said the agency was going to “hit the ground running” to implement the new law.
Taylor spoke of FDA’s “strong team of experts with experience in preventative controls.” Are those the same people that FDA needs to hire, train, deploy and support the skilled personnel it is going to need to make the new law reality?
We can only hope. With the exception of the U.S. military, which has developed an amazing ability to change and adapt in the middle of a mission, the federal government is a pretty inflexible organization.
FDA’s bungled implementation of the new egg rule is not all that unusual for the federal government. There is no need to go into the many examples of why we have low expectations for the feds when it comes to change, 21st Century style.
It is reason enough for Food Safety News to pay as much attention to this implementation phase of the Food Safety Modernization Act as we did for its long journey through the 111th Congress.
Taylor is correct in that history will not be made until the new law is part of the day-to-day operation of the food safety system.
Two gluten-free frozen-food products marketed to children are being recalled because they may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.
Ian’s All-Natural and Organic Foods for Kids is recalling its wheat-free, gluten-free brown-rice pasta “Mac and No Cheese” and its wheat-free, gluten-free soy “French Bread Pizza.”
According to the company website, 492 individual boxes are potentially affected. The products “may have been distributed to retailers nationwide and sold in frozen foods sections of supermarkets.”
The products and their UPC codes are:
• 8-ounce boxes of Ian’s Wheat Free, Gluten Free Mac and No Cheese with a use-by date of 26 Aug 2011 and UPC code 7-49512-43670-8 (372 packages impacted)
• 8-ounce boxes of Ian’s Wheat Free, Gluten Free French Bread Pizza with a use-by date of 28 Aug 2011 and UPC code 7-49512-91572-2 (120 packages impacted)
Listeria monocytogenes is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy persons may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headaches, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths in pregnant women.
Consumers who purchased the above products with the specific use-by dates and UPC codes listed are asked to return the products to the place of purchase to receive a full refund. Products that do not contain the specific use-by dates and UPC codes listed are not affected by the recall, and can be used by consumers.
Consumers with questions can contact Ian’s, which is based in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at 1-800-543-6637 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or at customerservice@iansnaturalfoods.com.
More information is available on the Ian’s website at www.iansnaturalfoods.com.
Tests conducted on commercial ground beef identified disease-causing E. coli that could be considered significant food safety threats, according to the authors of a new study.
Results of these latest tests support earlier studies that have shown the presence of non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) in the retail meat supply, particularly in ground beef.
According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these non-O157 STEC cause more than 160,000 illnesses each year.
Only E. coli O157:H7 has been classified as an adulterant in U.S. beef, but these non-O157 STEC also can harm human health and have become an increasing concern, the study notes.
“The data clearly show that clinical and public health laboratories should routinely screen human and environmental specimens for the presence of non-O157,” the scientists conclude. Currently most labs do not.
The study, by Joseph M. Bosilevac of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service and Mohammad Koohmaraie, College of Food and Agriculture, King Saud University, was published Jan. 21, 2011 in the American Society for Microbiology’s Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal.
Authors of an earlier study in Maryland, which found 10 E. coli serotypes in retail meat products, concluded that their testing ”demonstrated that retail meats, mainly ground beef, were contaminated with diverse STEC strains.”
Independent tests commissioned by the Seattle food safety firm Marler Clark, sponsor of Food Safety News, also demonstrated the prevalence of non-O157 STEC in the retail ground beef supply. Marler Clark has petitioned the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to declare STEC as adulterants.
