Last week I opted to dispense with sharing some more good news about Food Safety News in order to share another of my solutions for solving a food safety problem.  I’m going to get to the good news.
For the record, I think I’ve only advanced two ideas for food safety.  Last week it was my medical marijuana model for keeping raw milk out of the mouths of children, while giving adults a little more access to that thick white liquid.
The only other time I’ve wandered into problem solving is my advocacy for a federal fee based food safety system rather than the “taxpayer” system we have today.   
In reality that means that for every dollar we need to inspect food today, we are going into debt with the likes of the Chinese for the next 30 or 40 years.
But why worry when there are so many great things going on at Food Safety News?  We’ve been in business for exactly one year and five months. For yours truly, that has been just time enough to produce 1,000 entries under this byline; news articles and this weekly column.
Food Safety News  was named earlier this month by the FDAzilla Blog as one of the “Top 40 Websites (and Tweeters) on the FDA.” We were honored to be the only food safety site to make the list.  All the rest cover the “D” part of the FDA, meaning drugs and medical devices.
About Food Safety News, FDAzilla said: “This is the only one I go to.”  
For our part we’ve been delighted to spend more time on this valuable site, which among many other features, maintains a database of FDA employees. Thanks for the honor!
Then there was good news from our own Tweet Deck. Helena Bottemiller at our Washington D.C. bureau gets all the credit for keeping the Food Safety News Tweet Deck all ship-shape.  
This week she told us that the famous food writer Mark Bittman, who has something north of 100,000 followers on Twitter, picked up my story about a  little juiced bob calf going to market. 
Meanwhile twilling around Twitter-verse on its own was Mary Rothschild’s piece about getting all your fruits and vegetables for $2.50 a day.  Always nice when you figure out what people are really interested in.
At the same time, Helena went and got herself interviewed by those well-pronounced interviewers from the BBC.  All of which tells us we must be doing something right.
Until next week.

Two years ago this week Stewart Parnell, the embattled CEO of Peanut Corporation of America, the company implicated in a nationwide Salmonella outbreak that sickened 700 and killed nine, stood in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.

Victims of the outbreak and their families watched in disbelief. Lawmakers were stunned and eventually dismissed Parnell from the hearing.

In the wake of the high-profile food scandal, many of those most intimately affected by the outbreak have become vocal advocates for stronger food safety laws. Friday, 10 victims and surviving family members shared their stories at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Their message was clear. They want the U.S. Department of Justice to file criminal charges against Parnell.

“We’re disappointed in the justice system,” said Larry Andrew of Roseburg, Oregon, whose wife Karen was severely sickened in the outbreak. “If there was ever a case that cried out for prosecution, this is it.”

Karen became ill from eating Clif Bars that had used PCA peanut butter as an ingredient. When all was said and done, more than 4,000 products–from energy bars to crackers–were recalled for containing peanut products believed to be at risk for contamination.

Peter Hurley is a Republican police officer who became a food safety advocate after his 3-year-old son Jake was hospitalized from Salmonella he got from eating his favorite peanut butter crackers.  Hurley said he was tired of waiting for action.

“I ask Eric Holder, when will Stewart Parnell be arraigned? It’s time. We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said Hurley at the news conference.

Though no federal agency will comment on the status of the case, multiple sources in and outside of government confirm that there is an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), in a prepared statement, said, “I believe that this tragedy could have been prevented, but our current food safety system is not strong enough to do so.”
DeLauro said it was the “alleged actions of PCA” during the Salmonella outbreak that highlighted the need for stronger criminal penalties in food safety laws. She called the recently enacted Food Safety Modernization Act a “strong first step” but the regulatory system is still “antiquated and incapable of acting efficiently.”  As she has before, DeLauro called for consolidating all the federal agencies that share jurisdiction in overseeing the food supply into a single food safety agency.    

Minnesota’s “cheeseburger bill” is back on the grill in St. Paul.
State Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, has again introduced legislation to bar obese Minnesotans from suing their favorite fast food restaurants for making them fat.
The “Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act” would prevent anyone in Minnesota from filing lawsuits against the likes of McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s for their weight gain.
In addition to shielding fast food restaurants, the bill would also protect farmers and others in the Minnesota food industry from frivolous lawsuits, Urdahl says.
Minnesota’s cheeseburger bill has been around since 2001 and actually passed the Minnesota House in 2005. This is an unusual year in Minnesota–both the House and Senate are controlled by the Republican Party.
McDonald’s has been sued–last December in California and in 2002 in New York–by plaintiffs making the very claim the cheeseburger law would take away. Urdahl says if someone gets fat from eating Big Macs, the fault lies with the person who ate them, not with  McDonald’s  for selling them.
Nor is Minnesota’s cheeseburger law that unusual. Twenty-three other states already prohibit such claims.
There is one place where obesity lawsuits are going forward–on television. ABC’s “Harry’s Law” took on the subject this week with a plot in which the overweight mother of several plump children won $880,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Food prices, salt, and waste all topped concerns about food safety in the periodic tracking survey conducted in the United Kingdom for the Food Standards Agency.
In a November 2010 tracking survey, the FSA found out what was on the minds of 2,105 adults in the UK.
The main food issues , according to survey respondents, were food prices (54 percent); the amount of salt in food (45 percent) and food waste (42 percent.  
When asked about food safety, the top concerns were food hygiene when eating out (36 percent), food poisoning (29 percent), and the use of food additives (27 percent.)
FSA periodically placed tracking questions in an omnibus consumer survey in order to stay on top of public opinion and awareness of the agency and key food issues.
Eighty per cent of respondents were aware of the hygiene standards in the places they ate out in or buy food from. The main way people judged the hygiene standards were from the general appearance of the premises (65 percent), appearance of staff (51 percent) and its reputation (42 percent).
Among other findings in the latest survey:
Respondents aged 16-25 demonstrated a lower total concern than every other age group for the main food issues of total concern.
Amongst the sample, slightly fewer people reported being concerned about the safety of food sold in UK shops and supermarkets compared to UK restaurants, pubs, cafes and takeaways (45 percent compared to 51 percent respectively).
Males were less concerned about the safety of food sold overall than females, as were respondents who were not the principal shopper compared to respondents who were the principal shopper.
And 79 percent of respondents in the UK reported being aware of the Food Standards Agency.
Those who were aware of the FSA were asked what issues they thought the FSA was responsible for. The main issue that respondents reported to fall within the Agency’s remit was ensuring food bought is safe to eat (82 percent).
Half of the respondents who reported being aware of the Food Standards Agency were asked how much they trust or distrust the FSA to do its job. 62 percent of these respondents reported that they trusted the Agency to do its job.
FSA began the tracking surveys in 2001.  It now places seven questions in the face-to-face omnibus survey twice a year.
The questions cover concern about specific food issues (spontaneous and prompted), attitudes towards particular food safety issues; awareness of hygiene standards in eating establishments; awareness of the Food Standards Agency and the Agency’s responsibilities (spontaneous and prompted); and trust in the FSA.
The complete results along with detailed information about the survey can be found here.

Utah state Rep. Bill Wright is proposing a bill that would exempt his state from federal food regulations, including the recently enacted food safety bill, if the food is not sold across state lines.

“Within the state, it’s state’s rights. We already have regulations over those items,” Wright told the Salt Lake Tribune in an interview. “We function well now. We don’t think they have a right or authority to regulate those items that are not interstate commerce, as long as they’re grown within the state, packaged in the state and remain in the state.”

The historic FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, signed by President Obama in January, contains exemptions for small farms, under certain conditions, to help reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses. The new law does not apply to farms and very small businesses that sell most of their food directly to consumers, restaurants, or grocery stores within the same state, or within 275 miles, and have less than $500,000 in annual sales.

The exemption, known as the ‘Tester Amendment,’ after Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), does allow the FDA to withdraw the exemption if food from an exempt farm or facility is associated with a foodborne illness outbreak.

As the Tribune noted, Wright’s bill is modeled after a Montana gun law that Utah adopted last year, which “built on the premise that if the product doesn’t cross state borders, the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce shouldn’t apply and there is no constitutional right to federal regulation.”