CDC Rejects Internet Age…
Wants To Keep All Information Secret During The Outbreak So Nobody Can Question Its Decisions
Jonathan Rockoff of The Baltimore Sun pushed CDC hard on an issue we have been preaching: transparency. He kept asking the same question we asked here. Would the CDC post on its web site not just vague ranges such as “illnesses began between April 10 and June 13, 2008,” but instead release quantities that became […]
Dr. Michael Osterholm, Esteemed Authority On Public Health, Speaks Frankly About The FDA, The CDC And The Incompetent Management of the Salmonella Saintpaul Tomato Outbreak Investigation
Producing this Perishable Pundit is a lot of work and much of it is thankless. We try to give clear-headed assessments of issues and events and sometimes people would rather not have things discussed in such a straight-forward manner. When things get tough, though, we can turn to many wonderful letters we have been sent […]
Pundit’s Mailbag — FDA’s
‘Unconscionable’ Acts
Our extensive coverage of the Salmonella Saintpaul Tomato Outbreak has brought many letters including those from organizations not at all involved with tomatoes: I, for one, just wanted to thank you for keeping a stern dialogue in the Pundit and working to get the attention of FDA. It is, you are right, unconscionable for a […]
Three Questions For FDA
After listening to last week’s press conferences by the FDA and CDC, three questions came to mind: 1) Why does the FDA establish policies that don’t make sense? For example, in the early days of this outbreak the FDA’s recommendation against consuming various types of tomatoes only applied to New Mexico and Texas. Yet one […]
Two Weeks Late, Three Mexican States Left On FDA’s Suspect List
Over the weekend we came out with a Special Announcement entitled, FDA Expands List of Mexican States Not Associated With Salmonella Saintpaul Outbreak, and we announced that the FDA had expanded its list of places in Mexico that “HAVE NOT BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE OUTBREAK” to include the following Mexican states: Aguascalientes, Baja California Norte, […]
FDA Provides No IncentiveTo Invest In Food Safety
One wonders if the FDA is aware of how much its rhetoric has diverged from its practice. On a recent press call, Dr. David Acheson, M.D., FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Foods, said all the right things about food safety. When he was asked if the FDA was going to do more inspections, he said that […]
FDA Shakedown
It is no surprise, but in a recent conference call Dr. David Acheson, M.D., FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Foods, finally fessed up to the way FDA’s “not implicated” list is set up. Being that life offers only two possibilities, either one is “implicated” or one is “not implicated,” a consumer is likely to think that […]
The Glorification Of Traceback
If you listen to the pronouncements of the FDA, you see them as heroes searching with great difficulty to trace back the Salmonella outbreak on tomatoes to its source. And, indeed the job is a difficult one. Remember we only have 243 people who have been interviewed. Assuming half actually remember something useful, we are […]
What Does the Word ‘Ongoing’ Mean?
Perhaps our biggest Pundit Peeve with this whole Salmonella Saintpaul/Tomato problem has been the lack of clarity with which CDC and FDA chooses to communicate to the public. For example, the FDA and CDC keep characterizing the outbreak as “ongoing” without defining that term. Now to a consumer, the word “ongoing” means “I am still […]
What Would FDA Do
With ‘Preventive Authority’
The FDA and CDC have held a series of conference calls and press conferences during the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak and most are rather predictable. Yet listening to FDA’s Dr. David Acheson, M.D., Associate Commissioner for Foods, speak on a recent call was rather shocking. In response to a question, he pointed out that FDA had […]
