An in-depth analysis reveals deep, structural problems that prevent the FDA from adequately ensuring the safety of our food—so why is the agency attacking supplements? Action Alert!
A major investigation into the FDA’s food safety work from Politico shows a profoundly broken agency unable to do the jobs it has been tasked with.
Some major takeaways from the report include:
- The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition lacks clear leadership, “suffers from a deep-seated culture of avoiding hard decisions and has a near paralyzing fear of picking serious fights with the food industry,” (emphasis added).
- The FDA has not put standards in place for the water used to grow fresh produce, which were part of a 2011 food safety bill.
- The agency has dragged its feet in regulating heavy metals and other contaminants in baby food.
This confirms what ANH has been saying for some time. The FDA defers to the interests of Big Food and Big Pharma, and works to protect their interests. This means undermining and attacking dietary supplements, which compete with drugs. That’s why we see dangerous policies being pursued like mandatory product registration for supplements.
Our previous coverage details everything wrong with mandatory product registration for supplements. The problem is that many of your elected officials in Congress still think this proposal is completely harmless. Even though we know the bottom line is that if it gets approved, more than 41,000 supplements could be removed from the market.
Supporters of this proposal are working quickly behind the scenes so there is no time to lose!
Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them to oppose “mandatory filing” for supplements. Please send your message immediately. Please also forward this alert to three friends and ask them to act. We need all hands on deck to defeat this proposal being pushed by Senator Durbin!
