Liver and muscle tissues taken from a goat sold last August for slaughter by a West Virginia livestock operation contained residue from the animal drug Moxidectin, which is used to control parasites and tapeworms.

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, in analyzing tissue samples taken from the goat sold by Hite’s Livestock Inc., found 0.0383 parts per million (ppm) of Moxidectin in the liver; and 0.0543 ppm in the muscle.  

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not established a tolerance level for residues of Moxidectin in the edible tissues of goats, but in a Feb. 1 warning letter to the Bloomery, WV livestock company, FDA said the presence of any Moxidectin in the edible tissues of goats means that it is adulterated, under the law.

“Our investigation also found that you hold animals under conditions that are so inadequate that medicated animals bearing potentially harmful drug residues are likely to enter the (human) food supply,” the warning letter said.  ”For example, you lack a system to ensure that animals you buy and then sell for slaughter as food have not been medicated, or, if they have been medicated, to allow you to withhold the animals from slaughter for an appropriate period of time to deplete potentially hazardous residues of drugs and edible tissues.”

To avoid being continually found to be in violation, Hite’s Livestock should take the following steps the FDA letter stated:

• Implement a system to identify the animals purchased with records to establish traceability to the source.

• Implement a system to determine whether the animal has been medicated and with what drugs.

• Implement a system to withhold an animal from slaughter for an appropriate period of time to deplete potentially hazardous residues of drugs from edible tissues or identify the animal as medicated.

One problem, however, is that because FDA does not approve Moxidectin for use in goats, neither is there an official withdrawal period.

“Serious deviations” from federal food safety regulations, including juice Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) rules, were reported in a Feb. 4 warning letter to Chicago’s Juice Tyme Inc.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the Premium Orange 4 + 1 with Pulp juice product made by Juice Tyme is adulterated “in that it has been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.”
Juice Tyme makes stable, bag-in-box beverages for sale in bars and restaurants, school cafeterias, and numerous other food service outlets.
Juice Tyme’s juice processing facility at 4401 South Oakley in Chicago was subjected to FDA inspection last July 20 through Sept. 30.  FDA said the inspection turned up “serious deviations” from the regulations.   For example:
– Its HACCP plan for Premium 4 + 1 with Pulp fails to list measures that will achieve a 5-log reduction on pertinent microorganisms. 
A “5-log reduction” means lowering the number of microorganisms by 100,000-fold, that is, if a surface has 100,000 pathogenic microbes on it, a 5-log reduction would reduce the number of microorganisms to one.
“According to your October 13, 2010 response, your firm indicates that Juice Tyme, Inc. is currently in the advance stages of installing a pasteurization system that would perform the necessary 5-log reduction of microorganisms of this product,” the warning letter says.  ”However, as mentioned above, the “Premium Orange 4 + 1 with Pulp” you currently market and manufacture requires a 5-log reduction and the study you provided to FDA does not ensure the safety of the “Premium Orange 4 + 1 with Pulp”.  Your documentation failed to identify the critical factors that result in a 5-log reduction and failed to document that the process you are using is identical to the conditions in the study provided.”
FDA also Juice Tyme was failing to monitor the condition and cleanliness of food contact surfaces, prevent cross contamination, and protect food, food packaging materials and food contact surfaces from pests.
 – Inspectors reported seeing “fly-like” insects in the process and packaging areas, blending room, and in lemon juice concentrate.
FDA said as a manufacturer of acidified food products, Juice Tyme must obtain an emergency control permit.  Inspectors found documented deviations from the acidified food law involving thickened water nectar, thickened water lemon, and thickened water honey.  The deviations mean Juice Tyme’s acidified food products are adulterated.
FDA said the juice maker failed to file a scheduled process for its thickened water products.  It also failed to register as a commercial processor of acidified foods.  That should have been done within 10 days of the startup of a manufacturing.
Juice Tyme also failed to use a qualified person on the project who would have known how to schedule processes for the thickened water products.  It also failed to do the testing and recording required to control pH levels.
Juice Tyme did not respond to Food Safety News with a comment on the warning letter.  On its website, the juice maker says it takes “the lead when it comes to food safety and manufacturing practices–from product testing to blending to packaging.”

On the morning of the Fourth of July in 1850, President Zachary Taylor strolled out of the White House and into the summer heat of Washington DC.  He  stopped to watch a Sunday school program, chomped on a couple of green apples, then attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the pending construction of the Washington Monument.
After the ceremony, he took a walk along the Potomac River, then back to the White House.  Overheated and thirsty, he is said to have eaten a huge bowl of cherries, along with cold water and milk.
Later, after dinner, he didn’t feel well.  The next day he felt even worse.  At some point, he started having bouts of diarrhea, some of it bloody.  His doctor diagnosed his ailment as cholera, and treated it with calomel and opium.  The doc may also have sliced open a vein and bled the President.
Four days later, on July 9, the celebrated war hero known to the nation as “Ol’ Rough n’ Ready,” a grizzled veteran of violent conflicts ranging from the War of 1812 to the Mexican War, died in bed at the age of 64.
Nobody can say with certainty what killed him.  Like all 19th century Presidents, Taylor preceded any knowledge of the microbes that cause Salmonella and other foodborne illnesses.  At the time, Louis Pasteur was still in his 20s, and the world was still 50 years from pasteurization and other crucial developments in sanitation and public health.
But medical historians can look back and speculate based on symptoms, incubation periods and timing.
In Taylor’s case, the timing appears to suggest contamination by Salmonella or some similar microbe.  If it wasn’t in the cherries, then perhaps the water used to wash them.  Or the unpasteurized milk.   Or the green apples. Or the previous day’s lunch.  Whatever the source, it probably was aggravated by the hot weather, by Washington’s open, fly-infested sewers.
And, like other Presidents, Taylor’s fate was probably sealed by his doctor’s ill-conceived “treatments.”
In any event, Taylor is probably not the only American President felled by foodborne illness. His predecessor, James K. Polk, died of cholera and “debilitating diarrhea” a few weeks after leaving the White House.  Thomas Jefferson appears to have died of amoebic dysentery.   Several Presidents, including James Monroe and Andrew Jackson, are believed to have succumbed to tuberculosis, which can be transmitted via air or food.
Given all this, US Presidents have proven to be remarkably durable.  Most lived into their 70s.   John Adams, James Madison and John Quincy Adams made it to their 80s, and died of “heart failure.”
The short-lived Presidents were those who were assassinated, and Ulyssess Grant, who smoked far too many cigars.
Taylor’s death, however, remained something of a mystery, kept alive by descendants and others who insisted he must have been poisoned by southerners who were angered by Taylor’s moderate stance on slavery.
Finally, in 1991, Taylor’s body was exhumed from his Kentucky tomb and analyzed for signs of arsenic – the poison of choice.  Tests showed arsenic levels far below what would have killed him.
So Ol’ Rough and Ready was re-interred to rest in peace with the knowledge that, whatever we conclude about life, death is like a bowl of cherries.

During the past week, Food Safety News brought readers the details on the proposal for food safety funding in President Obama’s $3.7 trillion budget.
Helena Bottemiller, our capitol correspondent, reported the President was putting FDA in for an additional $170 million for food safety, while trimming USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service back by $8 million.
How these recommendations will hold up in Congress remains to be seen.
One number caught my eye–only $11 million in FSIS fees would come from the beef, pork, and poultry industries. To put that into context, consider the fact that in 2009 the retail value of beef alone was $73 billion.
If my math is correct, that would make 2011-12 fees total 0.015 percent of the 2009 retail sales for just beef.  J. Patrick Boyle is acting all outraged about that.
Perhaps due to the tiny reliance on fees, the actual amount for meat inspection will decline to $889 million, down from $904 million.
Boyle, president and chief executive officer of the American Meat Institute, hates fees.  ”If passed, these fees would ultimately pick the pocket of the American consumer, who already has been taxed once for the operating budget of government’s food safety program.  Meat inspection is a mandated federal program which benefits public health and should be paid for by the federal government,” Boyle says.
J. Patrick, you are so full of it.  But to keep myself in line with the publisher’s new rules, let me say Mr. Boyle is a savvy Washington D.C. insider who does a superb job for the meat industry.
Still — my truck is inspected annually under a mandated state safety program, and I pay for it.
J. Patrick knows that for every dollar FSIS needs to provide continuous USDA inspection service at the more than 600 federal establishments that serve AMI clients, forty cents has to be borrowed from somewhere–usually China. 
Talk about “picking the pocket of the American consumer!”   It will take 30 or 40 years before the full cost of inspection service is paid off.
Let me say it again. The food safety system should not be funded out of the general fund.    It’s too erratic, and too dependent on debt.  Fees that, yes, will be passed on to consumers should fund it, or most of it.
AMI takes great pride in the fact that it has beat down the implementation of fees that were proposed by past administrations and it will go about doing it again with the Obama budget.
But it is a dinosaur move. The smart move is getting out of being a general fund dependent and subsidized industry. The smart move is running from that as fast as you can.

Only in Washington D.C. can a rule to enforce the law be used as a tactic to delay doing anything.
But that’s exactly what the U.S. Department of Agriculture did Friday when it announced a rule requiring inspection of catfish and catfish products.
On the surface, that might sound like the federal government was finally getting serious about implementing the 2008 Farm Bill’s language shifting catfish inspection to USDA’s Food safety & Inspection Service (FSIS) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Farm Bill contains law to make that shift in order to give catfish the same sort of continuous inspection that FSIS provides to beef, pork, and poultry.
But while the domestic catfish industry has long sought “amenable species” status under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, foreign sources of catfish see USDA inspection as a trade protection measure.
So, Obama Administration officials were acknowledging–at least off the record–that the real reason for the long delay in implementing the Farm Bill’s catfish requirements is concern about U.S. trade relations with Vietnam.
Vietnam’s seafood exports, including its catfish species, are expected to hit a record $5 billion in 2011.
USDA will not be doing any catfish inspections, but it will be accepting comments, through June 24, on possible rules for some future program. It wants opinions on two options for defining catfish.
“One option is the current labeling definition in the 2002 Farm Bill, which includes all species in the family Ictaluridae,” USDA said in a press release.  ”The other option is to define catfish as all species in the order Siluriformes, including the three families typically founding human food channels, including letaluridae, Pangasiidae, and Clariidae.”
USDA said the proposed rule would apply to catfish produced in or imported to the U.S.  Catfish sold in the U.S. will require the FSIS mark of inspection, and that of its country of origin if exported.
The draft rules provide for the possibility of a “transition” period for both domestic and foreign catfish producers.  Asian producers see USDA’s plans for in-country inspection of catfish for export as taking too long to set up.  No money was requested for catfish inspection in teh Obama administration’s budget submission for 2011-12.
Comments must be received through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov; by mail to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, FSIS Docket Clerk, Room 2-2127, George Washington Carver Center, 5601 Sunnyside Ave., Mailstop 5272, Beltsville, MD 20705; or by e-mail to fsis.regulationscomments@fsis.usda.gov. 
All comments must identify FSIS and docket number FSIS-2008-0031. Comments will be available for viewing on the FSIS website at:
www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations_&_policies/2008_Notices_Index/index.asp. 
In addition to a public comment period, FSIS intends to hold public meetings on the proposed rule, which will be announced at a later date.

After the UK’s Food Standards Agency issued an official guidance this week, detailing the steps food handlers need to prevent cross-contamination by E. coli O157 and other bacteria, the head of a meat trade group called the standards “draconian.”
The guidance was developed in the aftermath of lethal outbreaks of E. coli O157 in Scotland in 1996, when 400 fell ill and 21 people died, and in Wales in 2005, which sickened 157, most of them children, and led to the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones. Both outbreaks were attributed to cross-contamination from a lack of hygiene and improper food handling.
Professor Hugh Pennington’s report into the 2005 E.coli outbreak and public consultation were taken into consideration in developing the new guidance.
However, Roger Kelsey, chief executive of the National Federation of Meat & Food Traders said his organization had been disappointed with the consultation process. 

Kelsey told Meat Trades Journal: “The actual report and the implications of the recommendations are draconian. It covers areas that can be addressed by adequate HACCP procedures.”

Some of the key measures highlighted in the guidance to control E.coli are:
• Identification of separate work areas, surfaces and equipment for raw and ready-to-eat food.• Use of separate complex equipment, such as vacuum-packing machines, slicers, and mincers for raw and ready-to-eat food.• Handwashing should be carried out using a recognised technique. Anti-bacterial gels must not be used instead of thorough handwashing.• Disinfectants and sanitisers must meet officially recognised standards and should be used as instructed by the manufacturer.
Although E. coli contamination was the key focus of the guidance, FSA noted that the measures will help to control other bacteria, such as Campylobacter and Salmonella. The FSA said the guidance will also be used by local authority food safety officers when inspecting food establishments.