Free Republic

Texas Gov. Rick Perry probably shouldn't have attempted to make the case that gay people can "decide not to" be gay despite genetic predisposition, he conceded Thursday, offering no semblance of an apology but trying instead to rally attention back to his message about jobs and the economy. "I got asked about an issue," Perry, a Republican, explained during a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "And instead of saying, 'You know what? We need to be a really respectful and tolerant country - to everybody - and get back to talking about: Whether you're gay or straight, you...

The FDA, perhaps still smarting from the recent artisanal cheese kerfuffle, is setting its sights on a bigger target: salt.“The current level of [sodium] consumption is really higher than it should be,” said FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg. That’s why they’re preparing “voluntary guidelines” for the food industry encouraging them to stay below certain salt levels.While the guidelines will initially be voluntary, health groups are lobbying for mandatory standards — lobbying that will only grow more intense if businesses refuse to comply once the standards are released. If businesses don’t go light on the salt “then FDA should start a process...

CNSNews.com has confirmed that Monica Metz, the FDA employee who wrote the letter that said "the use of wooden shelves... for cheese ripening does not conform to cGMP requirements," previously worked for Leprino Foods, the largest mozzarella producer in the world. In other words, Metz, a former employee of "big cheese," used her position at the FDA to write a letter that would have obliterated the artisanal cheese making industry (or "small cheese.") The FDA put at least one New York cheese maker out of business for "a 'repeat violation' involving aging cheese on wood," but the Agency now says...

It's been a weird few days for people who love good cheese, particularly wheels of American farmstead cheese aged on wooden boards: Last week, it seemed as if the FDA had moved to ban aging cheese on wood, a practice almost as old as coagulated dairy itself and the production aspect that turns Comté into, well, Comté. New York's Department of Agriculture got curious as to why the agency had all of a sudden cited several producers for doing something New York and practically every other state permit, so the FDA replied it was simply enforcing long-standing policy, not doing...

Darcy Olsen, president of the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, and Richard Garr, president of Neuralstem, a biotech company, wrote "Right to Try experimental drugs" in USA Today (5/28/2014). They pointed out that "this year, more than 5,000 Americans will lose their battle with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease." Up until recently, there was no medicine on the market that significantly improved the lives of ALS patients. But now there is one in clinical trials that holds considerable promise, but it has not been granted Food and Drug Administration approval. The average amount of time it takes to get a...

The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday that it will not allow cheese makers use wooden boards to age their cheese - a ruling that would effectively wipe out artisanal cheeses.The FDA's ruling came to light after several cheese makers in New York were cited - despite state laws that allow the use of wood boards."Reports showed that the porous structure of wood made it susceptible to the colonization of bacteria on the surface and inside the wood," Monica Metz, the branch chief for the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition's Dairy and Egg Branch, wrote...

Gabe Luddy, fourth-generation cheesemaker at Vella Cheese Co. in Sonoma, makes his Dry Jack the same way his grandfather and great-grandfather did - he rolls and presses curds into large wheels of cheese, then brines and coats the wheels before sliding them onto wooden racks. There they age, from seven months to several years. A U.S. Food & Drug Administration statement which became public last week puts this 83-year-old practice in doubt. In what the agency is calling a clarification, the FDA has declared that the wooden surfaces that cheesemakers around the world age cheeses on "cannot be adequately cleaned...

Old guy in the cell: What are you in for? New guy in the cell: I aged cheese on wooden boards. Old guy: Oh. (Moves away slowly.) From Walter Olson at Overlawyered, the FDA has interpreted the Food Safety Modernization Act to preclude the aging of cheese on wood boards. Much as you may not think this touches your life, it does if you happen to enjoy any better cheese than velveeta. From CheeseUnderground: A sense of disbelief and distress is quickly rippling through the U.S. artisan cheese community, as the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week announced...

The white-marble Rayburn House Office Building, in Washington DC, looks like a giant courts building or a central bank, fully intimidating and imposing in its hulking stony blockiness. And the US Congress, of course, is an institution best known for its tedium, albeit a tedium that is regularly punctuated by fiery partisan combat. On a typical day, the Rayburn building--acronymed as RHOB--is a place where politicos and bureaucrats struggle for and against some special interest, yea or nay, on regulation or appropriation. And the biggest single activity in RHOB, or in any of the other five office edifices on Capitol...

The latest bad news concerns one more of the ill-fated thiazolidinediones (TZDs). This class of drugs was introduced in the late 1990s, and includes Avandia, Actos, and Rezulin. TZDs are PPAR-gamma agonists, meaning that they activate peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, especially the “gamma” receptor. Such activation affects certain metabolic processes, and among other things, insulin resistance is reduced. Rezulin—notoriously fast-tracked by FDA—was withdrawn from the market in 2000, in the wake of scores of liver failures and deaths. Pfizer, the manufacturer, was on the hook for upwards of $750 million in damages. At the time, Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of FDA’s...

For reasons passing understanding, the FDA announced recently that it was moving forward with invoking its authority to regulate cigars, along with other forms of tobacco. It’s a part of the Tobacco Control Act, signed into law in 2009, which gave the agency the option of casting its net down on cigars at the time of its choosing. In other words – it was only a matter of time before bureaucrats decided to be bureaucrats. It’s not set into stone, yet. Between now and July 9 the FDA will accept comments on its proposals, at which point it will the...

The government bureaucrats who regulate and inspect our food for a living may be less than competent at scrutinizing their own meals. The national Food Safety Summit was attended by 1,300 food safety officials, including agents of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control as well as a number of large businesses. Officials hired the Baltimore Convention Center and its food service provider, Centerplate, to host and cater the event. “A couple of our folks indicated that they had experienced symptoms associated with food poisoning after the summit,” said FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnam.

(Reuters) - A U.S. food safety summit in Maryland earlier this month has become a cautionary tale after more than 100 attendees came down with suspected food poisoning. Most of those affected complained of diarrhea, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement. Local health officials have heard from about 400 of the 1,300 attendees and are at a loss as to the exact cause of their illness. The April 8-10 meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center included representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and food...

Regulation of Electronic Cigarettes by the FDA By Mitch Zeller, the Director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Tobacco Products. Thank you for http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=23150e34359d1e932f1289742b953a8f8e720edd2808049ece878ad77ece739c your petition on electronic cigarettes . First things first: While we are seeking to regulate products like electronic cigarettes, the proposed regulation would not ban them. Some background, which you may already know: The http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=415c7a37f7f49244144907eba0707664a199c6968e1eda7adcc80fc526afbde7 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that Congress passed in 2009 gave the FDA immediate authority to regulate certain tobacco products -- cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, and smokeless tobacco -- under the http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=8b835bfd0f3ef363fa53fcef37ebc441c01a390924a58f216c1aae96f51dadc2 Federal Food, Drug, &...

Regulation of Electronic Cigarettes by the FDA By Mitch Zeller, the Director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Tobacco Products. Thank you for http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=23150e34359d1e932f1289742b953a8f8e720edd2808049ece878ad77ece739c your petition on electronic cigarettes . First things first: While we are seeking to regulate products like electronic cigarettes, the proposed regulation would not ban them. Some background, which you may already know: The http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=415c7a37f7f49244144907eba0707664a199c6968e1eda7adcc80fc526afbde7 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that Congress passed in 2009 gave the FDA immediate authority to regulate certain tobacco products -- cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, and smokeless tobacco -- under the http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=8b835bfd0f3ef363fa53fcef37ebc441c01a390924a58f216c1aae96f51dadc2 Federal Food, Drug, &...

The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday it will convene a public meeting in October to review the risks of psychiatric and behavioral side effects with Pfizer’s anti-smoking drug Chantix. […] Since 2009, Chantix has carried the government’s strongest safety warning—a “black box” label—because of links to hostility, agitation, depression and suicidal thoughts. The warning was added after the FDA received dozens of reports of suicide and hundreds of reports of suicidal behavior among patients taking the smoking-cessation drug. …

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2014-09491.pdfThis is the docket reading

WASHINGTON – The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. While the proposal being issued Thursday won't immediately mean changes for the popular devices, the move is aimed at eventually taming the fast-growing e-cigarette industry.

The Green Mountain State is poised to become the first to require food companies to label food products containing genetically modified ingredients.Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin tweeted he will sign a bill state lawmakers passed Wednesday mandating that foods with GMOs be labeled as having been produced with "genetic engineering." The bill would also make it illegal for foods with GMOs to be labeled "all natural" or "natural."While Maine and Connecticut have already passed GMO labeling bills, those bills contain clauses that keep them from going into effect until surrounding states pass similar rules. Vermont's bill would go into effect on...

The federal government wants to extend its oversight of tobacco to include cigars, hookah, nicotine gels, pipe tobacco and dissolvable tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration proposal being issued Thursday would ban sales to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels. …