The FDA has sent out warning letters to 17 food manufacturers claiming that certain products violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The development follows last October’s statement by FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg urging companies to review their nutrition claims.

Yesterday’s letters serve as a reminder that the agency is serious about holding manufacturers accountable for the promises they make to their customers. The vast majority of companies making health claims have been careful to include studies, research findings and other data supporting their claims on their websites, or otherwise make them available to consumers.

Even so, the FDA is saying companies continue to overreach, or neglect to balance their claims with statements that point out other nutritional aspects that are not so healthy.

For example, many of the manufacturers on this most recent list were cited for making claims such as “0 grams of trans fat” – a statement that, in and of itself, is accurate. However, many of these products contain significant amounts of saturated (bad) fats, or cholesterol, or sodium. FDA regulations state that if these nutritional elements exceed a certain amount, then manufacturers must include an ancillary notice next to any front-panel health declarations that directs the consumer to the Nutrition Facts panel.

There, they’ll see that the product does not have any trans fats as stated but, Wow, it’s loaded with saturated fat, cholesterol or sodium. No thanks, I’ll pass. more

Attempting to quantify the health-related costs associated with foodborne illness is, at best, an inexact science. There are so many variables to weigh. Some, like medical expenses and lost wages, are fairly obvious and easy to calculate. Research can reveal some pretty concrete numbers for those types of factors.

What about pain and suffering? Or the cost of financial burdens placed on a family whose primary wage-earner died as the result of a foodborne pathogen?

This “Big Picture” approach was taken with the new report: Health-Related Costs from Foodborne Illness in the United States (no mistaking the topic here, eh?). The study was authored by Robert Scharff, an assistant professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University (and a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration economist). The report itself was sponsored by the Produce Safety Project at Georgetown University.

The most astounding revelation in this study is that Scharff came up with a new number for the cost of foodborne illness: $152 billion. What makes that figure such an eye-opener? Past official government estimates have topped only $35 billion.

“The cost of foodborne illness is significantly greater in this report than in some past studies, but only because this study included costs of all pathogens and a more comprehensive measure of economic cost,” wrote Scharff in the report. “It is my hope that the improvements made here will lead to better decision-making, both at the legislative and regulatory level.”

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It took five years of on-and-off sparring, but organic supporters are raising a nice, tall glass of organic milk after the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued revised rules governing the “access to pasture” guidelines contained within the National Organic Program.

Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, a small farm advocacy group and one of the most vocal critics of the original regulations, was quoted in our print issue of SN as saying, “Flashing forward to a year from now, when this rule will be fully in place and enforced, we hope to be able to say that 100% of the name brands and private labels all meet the rigorous standards that consumers expect” from the USDA-certified organic label.

There are two reasons everyone is pleased. The first one, of course, is that the rule was changed. Starting in June, the USDA’s revised access to pasture regulation will require farmers to allow their cows to graze at least 120 days per year, and the cows must also get at least 30% of their food from pasture during the local grazing season. The old version simply — and vaguely — required “access to pasture,” with no further specifications as to how much or when.

Critics of the old rule claimed that large-scale dairies were taking advantage of the hazy wording to circumvent the spirit of the regulations but still calling their dairy products certified organic. Groups like the Cornucopia Institute and the Organic Consumers Association were tenacious in petitioning the USDA for investigations of specific big dairy operators and filing lawsuits. more

With so many different apps and gadgets springing up around the supermarket industry, it’s only appropriate that we get this, an interactive map detailing just about anything you’d care to know about food availability, our eating habits, and how depressingly obese we’ve become.

It’s called Your Food Environment Atlas, and it’s courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Obama administration’s drive to get Americans — and especially kids — eating healthier. Earlier this month Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move, a nationwide effort to increase availability of healthful foods for kids, and to get them exercising more. The administration also announced it plans to spend $400 million to help eliminate food deserts.

The new food atlas is incredibly detailed, and that makes it a fun, useful tool for consumers and food industry insiders alike. Go ahead, play around with it for a while. Want to know what U.S. county eats the most pounds of fruits and vegetables? How about the regions with the highest density of fast food restaurants? I was interested to see the distribution of farms that sell directly to consumers.

Other than being a diversion when things get slow at work, the USDA’s atlas is a definitive guide in the drive to make America healthier. That might sound overblown, but information is power, and this much information can go a long way. The food industry has stated time and again its commitment to helping people lead healthy lives. Well, now they have a good idea of what they’re up against.

There have been numerous efforts over the years to tackle childhood obesity in this country, but nothing so ambitious as what First Lady Michelle Obama announced on Tuesday. The new initiative she’s spearheading, dubbed Let’s Move, seeks to bring together government agencies and the private sector — basically, anybody and everybody that impacts children’s health — to combat the problem. The ultimate goal: Eliminate childhood obesity within a generation.

No doubt, it’s a sweeping response to a sweeping problem, with one in every three children in this country considered “obese”. As the name suggests, Let’s Move looks to get kids off the couch and moving around. There are many thoughtful food-related proposals, as well.

Expanding access to healthy foods is one of the major themes. Schools, for one, could soon see reform as the new plan looks to update the National School Lunch Program to include more healthy options. Neighborhoods where fresh, healthful food is hard to find, known as “food deserts” (which we wrote about here), are also a focus. Listen up, supermarkets: The administration’s 2011 budget calls for a $400 million investment to bring grocery stores to these underserved neighborhoods. That’d probably include generous tax breaks for any retailers that move in.

The Let’s Move agenda also looks to invest in educating consumers and enhancing transparency at the shelf level. more

For all the attention that the organic industry gets, it’s easy to forget just how small it really is. We got a reminder earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Agriculture offered up the results from its first ever wide-scale survey of organic farming.

According to the results, less than 1% of all farms in the U.S. are organic. The survey tallied 14,540 organic farms covering 4.1 million acres of land, with total sales of $3.16 billion in 2008.

A few other interesting findings from the report:

- No surprise, California led the nation with 20% of all organic farms and 36% of total sales.

- Organic farms bring in an average of $217,675 in sales, compared to $134,807 for all other farms.

- Expenditures for organic farms are higher, however, at $171,978 per farm compared to $109,359 for other farms.

- 44% of organic farms sold their products within 100 miles from where they were grown.

- 83% of organic farm sales came from wholesale channels, 10% direct from retailers, and only 7% of sales came directly from consumers. more

And just when we were starting to think the storyline had gone stagnant: Last week the Food and Drug Administration stated that they had “some concerns” about health risks posed by bisphenol-A, or BPA, the chemical used to strengthen plastic that appears in food packaging, baby bottles and other reusable containers.

The statement goes against one the agency made in 2008 that said the chemical was safe. That decision was a disappointment to many in the environmental and medical community — a disappointment compounded by a report that came shortly after from the National Toxicology Program (part of the National Institutes of Health) criticizing the FDA’s stance.

So what made the FDA change its mind? Credit the progressive new attitude coming from the Obama administration, under whom the agency has taken aggressive steps to safeguard public health. There’s also been the increased media attention on studies linking BPA to various ailments, from cancer to impaired brain development.

“I think that they could no longer hide from the evidence,” said Alex Formuzis, spokesman for the Environmental Working Group, when I interviewed him earlier today. “The facts were so stacked against their former position that they had no place to go.”

The chemical and manufacturing industries, for their part, are stating that the evidence is inconclusive. The American Chemistry Council released a statement saying they are “disappointed that some of the recommendations are likely to worry consumers and are not well-founded.”

But consumers have already made up their mind. more

When it comes to pesticides, potatoes are heavy hitters. They can receive up to 19 sprays in a single growing season. Farmers often spray on a weekly basis, or even more frequently to try to prevent blight. They also spray herbicides to kill the tops of the plants at the end of the growing season to make the underground tubers easier to harvest.

That’s why it’s so difficult to find organic potatoes, because the things are really tough to grow. It’s a high-value, but vulnerable, crop.

Every once in a while we hear from the Wisconsin Eco-Potato partnership, which was established in 1996 by the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association (WPVGA) and the University of Wisconsin. The goal has been to develop ways to minimize chemical use and promote sustainable farming. The effort has produced advances in integrated pest management, water conservation, soil protection and yields without the use of genetic modification.

In 2001, the group introduced the Healthy Grown label. In order to get it, farmers and their products are certified by Protected Harvest, an independent oversight organization created to monitor the overall effort. Healthy Grown has compiled an eight-year database tracing IPM and pesticide use, which is shared with the university and other organizations like the International Crane Foundation, the Defenders of Wildlife and the World Wildlife Fund.

“One of Healthy Grown’s greatest strengths is the collaboration between researchers, conservationists and growers,” notes A.J. Bussan, associate professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Healthy Grown emerged from a targeted set of specific sustainability standards, but all of us continue to challenge those standards.” more

In this Brave New World of bioterrorism, retailers who truly value their own in-house brands are presenting vendors with a Yellow Pages-size stack of forms to fill in for food safety purposes. All I can say is “Bring it on - it’s about time!”

The question I ask myself is why it took a terrorist attack to finally focus attention to the products pouring into our food supply.

One of the perks of my job is traveling the world to visit factories that manufacture food products. That said, one can only imagine what I’ve witnessed over the years — a veritable Clint Eastwood feast of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”!

I am not sure that I can always consider this aspect of my job a perk. When you are living out of a suitcase for weeks on end, washing undergarments in the hotel sink, exhausted from too much travel, too much food, too much stimulation and far too little sleep, you finally arrive home only to have folks ask about your vacation!

A vacation for me means that I can set aside worrying about quality issues for a few short days, knowing that I’ve done my part. more

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack paid a visit to Hy-Vee in Des Moines, Iowa this week to talk a bit about healthy eating and that topic that seems to be on everyone’s mind these days — nutrition labeling.

The point of reference here was the NuVal system Hy-Vee uses, which ranks food on a 100-point scale, with higher numbers indicating more nutritious choices. It’s definitely one of the easier-to-understand programs out there, and Vilsack, having strolled the aisles with Hy-Vee CEO Ric Jurgens checking out products (Frosted Mini Wheats, Mr. Secretary?), seems to agree. He praised NuVal and seemed — maybe? — to hint at the need for further label reform.

“If you take a look at a label — unless you’re a dietician or a chemist or a doctor — it’s really hard to determine between two products which is the best product for you and your family,” Vilsack said during a news conference at the store.

Amen to that. But if the secretary and the industry hopes to send a message about the need for clarity in nutrition labeling, they should be aware of what critics say about industry-led programs. According to them, the proliferation of different systems, each operating under different criteria, has only created further confusion. NuVal is different from Supervalu’s Nutrition IQ is different from Hannaford’s Guiding Stars, and so on. In one store you’ve got numbers, the other you’re reading the stars. more