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We pay good money for the food we eat and we expect its safety to be guaranteed. So shouldn’t we know if we’re eating:
A clone?
Recalled meat?
Milk from hormone-injected cows?
Food from another country with lower safety standards than ours?
Producers are required to list the ingredients and nutritional value on the labels of the food we buy. Why aren’t they required to tell us the rest of the story?
Consumers Union believes we all have the right to know what’s in the food we eat – it’s the only way to make an informed decision. We hope you will join us in our efforts to improve the information we’re given, and to make our food supply safer.
What you can do:
National efforts
Imports and Safety
Congress moves forward to protect food supply
CU calls for strong, quick, and comprehensive action by Congress, including increasing the frequency of inspections and giving the Food and Drug Administration mandatory recall authority for tainted foods.
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Clones
Recalls
Farm bill will harm food safety
A coalition of farm, science, consumer and animal welfare groups wrote to the Committee on Agriculture to explain why Section 123 of the Farm Bill will impede food safety. This letter provides some quick background and the text of Section 123.
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Organics
Eco-labels center
Here you’ll find out what the labels on your favorite products really mean. As the popularity of green product claims continues to grow, it’s important to know which claims you can trust and which ones you can’t.
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Growth hormones in milk
Mad Cow disease
Q & A: Mad cows and the Canadian border dispute
The fact that Canada has found three cases of mad cow disease to the United States’ one – and that one appears to have been born in Canada – suggests that Canada may have a more serious problem than the U.S.
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Imports and Safety
More than 76 million Americans get sick each year – and some 5,000 die – from contaminated food. Meanwhile, imports of food, some from countries without strict controls, have doubled since 2002. But the FDA inspects less than 1 percent of imports. It's a recipe for disaster.
Clones
Cloning technology is so new that the jury is still out on its safety. A majority of clones are born severely deformed and sickly; most don’t live for a year. So why is the FDA allowing cloned products on the market without labeling? Most consumers – 89 percent – want cloned food to be labeled.
Recalls
As unbelievable as it seems, there is no mandatory requirement that producers remove recalled food from supermarkets, restaurants and schools. On a more positive note, the government recently agreed to make public the names of retailers that receive tainted meat and poultry – no longer making consumers play a guessing game about the safety of the meat in their refrigerator.
Organic and local foods
With sales of organic food increasing, conventional food producers are trying to weaken organic standards via loopholes that would allow them to label products organic even if they include synthetics or contaminants. Preserving the integrity of organic labeling is vital to consumers’ right to know what they’re buying.
Growth hormones in milk
Farmers who don’t use growth hormones in their cows want to label their milk as ‘no artificial hormones’ because many consumers prefer their milk produced naturally. But the big growth hormone producers are trying to block these labeling efforts – a move that would leave consumers in the dark.
Mad Cow disease
The first case of U.S. mad cow disease was discovered in December 2003, and the FDA promised to quickly clamp down on ingredients in cattle feed that can spread the disease. More than four years later, the agency still hasn’t delivered on its promise, and may never do so.
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