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Swedish furniture giant Ikea was drawn into Europe's widening food labeling scandal Monday as authorities said they had detected horse meat in frozen meatballs labeled as beef and pork and sold in 13 countries across the continent.

The grocery store chain Trader Joe's is recalling peanut butter that has been linked to 29 salmonella illnesses in 18 states.

The world’s best-selling weedkiller, and a genetically modified maize resistant to it, can cause tumours, multiple organ damage and lead to premature death, new research published today reveals. In the first ever study to examine the long-term effects of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, or the NK603 Roundup-resistant GM maize also developed by Monsanto, scientists found that rats exposed to even the smallest amounts, developed mammary tumours and severe liver and kidney damage as early as four months in males, and seven months for females, compared with 23 and 14 months respectively for a control group.“This research shows an extraordinary number of...

fter granting permission, my Entire Food Shelf Life Summary Article was published in the Journal of Civil Defense, Volume 43, Issue Number 2, Year 2010. The Journal of Civil Defense has an extremely wide distribution and readership including all the Congressmen in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. Publisher's Mailing Address: The American Civil Defense Association, 11576 S. State Street, Suite 502, Draper, UT 84020 Publisher's Web Address: www.tacda.org.

California’s Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will be on November’s ballot as Proposition 37, according to proposition numbers released late yesterday by the California Secretary of State’s office. The Right to Know measure calls for labeling genetically engineered foods and, if passed, would be the first law in the United States requiring labeling of a wide range of genetically engineered foods. “Prop 37 is about our fundamental right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our children,” said Stacy Malkan, a spokesperson for the California Right to Know campaign. “Given the broad support in the...

The American Medical Association called for mandatory pre-market safety testing of genetically engineered foods as part of a revised policy voted on at the AMA's meeting in Chicago Tuesday. Currently biotech companies are simply encouraged to engage in a voluntary safety consultation with the Food and Drug Administration before releasing a product onto the market. Some activists concerned about foods made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, had hoped the association would have gone so far as to support mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. But some still view the policy change as a major breakthrough....On Tuesday, however, Monsanto spokesman...

China's Olympic runners raise chickens amid food fears: report Thu, Feb 23 2012 SHANGHAI | Thu Feb 23, 2012 8:12pm EST (Reuters) - China's national marathon team, who are training for the London Olympics this summer, are raising their own chickens for food to avoid ingesting banned chemicals commonly found in meat in China, the Shanghai Daily reported on Friday. The athletes, who are training in China's southwestern province of Yunnan, are also procuring yak meat from local highland herdsman to avoid eating at local restaurants where banned additives are sometimes present in food. Clenbuterol, a banned chemical, is sometimes...

Excerpts: In accordance with the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Codex Alimentarius scheme for global food control, the NZ Food Bill, if passed, will essentially transfer primary control of food from individuals to corporations under the guise of food safety. And unless massive public outcry and awakened consciences within the NZ government are able to put a stop to it, the bill could become law very soon. According to NZ Food Security, a group working to protect the food freedom of New Zealanders, the bill will turn growing and sharing food into a government-granted privilege rather than a human right. It...

September 13, 2011, 7:36 PM HKT. Arrests Made in China ‘Gutter Oil’ Scandal Police have arrested 32 people suspected of producing and selling old cooking oil that has been illegally collected from restaurant gutters, according to a Ministry of Public Security statement Tuesday (in Chinese). The statement said officials seized 100 tons of the recycled oil, which can contain carcinogens and other toxins that are harmful when consumed by humans. It said they also broke up a criminal network operating in 14 provinces and shut production sites where the oil is repurposed. The suspects were caught in a swill-oil crackdown...

A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities. And the flow of Chinese honey continues despite assurances from the Food and Drug Administration and other federal officials that the hundreds of millions of pounds reaching store shelves were authentic and safe following the widespread arrests and convictions of...

Japan to refrain from claiming safety of Japanese foods TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto has instructed his ministry to refrain from claiming the safety of Japanese foods, changing its stance after radiation-contamination beef was found to have been sold to consumers in Japan, sources close to the matter said Sunday. The change is due to discoveries of radiation-contaminated meat from cattle fed rice straw laden with radioactive cesium spewed from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

In his press conference today President Barack Obama did what we'd expect more from a terrorist than the leader of the free world. He threatened that if we don't give him more money, the nation's food supply may be compromised. His exact words when answering a question about negotiations to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling: "If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires...then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship. That means we've got to stop funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety...

Ministries divided over radioactive tea The Yomiuri Shimbun Local farmers have been thrown into confusion after the health and farm ministries expressed differing views over shipments of tea harvested in Kanagawa Prefecture after fresh leaves were found to have exceeded government limits for radioactive cesium. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has been trying to restrict shipments of tea leaves from the prefecture about 300 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant due to health concerns. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, however, has claimed that despite the high levels of radioactive material, drinking tea made from the...

Top 10 Chinese Food Scandals The massive stockpile of melamine-tainted milk powder seized from Chinese warehouses is the latest in a long line of food scandals. Here are 10 others: By Peter Foster, Beijing 11:00AM BST 27 Apr 2011 Melamine Milk scandal Toxic Bean-sprouts Pesticide-drenched ‘yard-long’ beans Leather milk ‘Aluminium’ dumplings Glow-in-the-dark pork ‘Lean meat powder’ pork Toxic take-away boxes ‘Sewer’ oil ‘Cadmium’ rice

Mystery of the 'glowing' pork BLUE pork, now that sounds tasty. A Shanghai resident found the pork she bought was giving off a "blue fluorescence" at night. Food safety experts said the blue light may have been caused by a photobacterium that contaminated the pork. They added that the pork would not harm people's health if it was well cooked. The resident surnamed Chen, who lives in Gaohang Town in the Pudong New Area, bought a kilogram of pork from a market on Yanggao Road N. on Tuesday. She used some of the pork to make dumplings that night and...

Ugh. Hong Kong's English daily South China Morning Post has a distinctly unsavory dispatch from the Chinese media this morning: Government scientists have released research that millions of acres of Chinese agricultural land and over 12 million tons of Chinese grain are contaminated by toxic metal pollution, according to this week's edition of the China Economic Weekly, a state-run magazine. Last week, a separate article reported that 10% of Chinese rice contained excess cadmium, a heavy metal known to cause cancer.

Once again, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with her sidekicks Waxman and Dingell, has used legislative "sleight-of-hand" to force through the “Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act” (H.R.2751) with S.510 attached. Just today, the Bill passed on a vote of 215 For and 144 Against. It is rich irony indeed that the "Cash for Clunkers" reauthorization bill (H.R.2751) has provided the ride for S.510, another “clunker” that will unleash an avalanche of useless, business-killing paperwork upon the food industry and a swarm of parasitic FDA bureaucrats. The result will be, as we have said all along, a food...

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the “lame duck” Congress, another law was passed that didn’t quite get the same media coverage as the Bush tax extension “package,” the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the new START treaty. The Food Safety Modernization Act was not steeped in the same level of popular controversy as these other pieces of legislation. Nevertheless, its passage may affect our daily lives even more than these, and in a rather stealth manner. Yes, the week before Christmas, the 111th Congress of the United States gave Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services...

The Shelbyville chief of police and a former Tyson employee confirmed that threatening messages surfaced this week, leading to extra security at the plant. "A couple days ago, they had a terrorist threat that was written on the bathroom walls that said 'all Americans must die,'" said a woman, who said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her relative, who works inside the plant. She said that she didn't see the writing herself but is aware of what's going on from others. "One day last week, someone set the women's bathroom on fire, and they finally put a security...

Exclusive: The Dept. of Homeland Security Uncovered a Plot to Attack Hotels and Restaurants Over a Single Weekend In this exclusive story, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports the latest terror attack to America involves the possible use of poisons - simultaneous attacks targeting hotels and restaurants at many locations over a single weekend. A key Intelligence source has confirmed the threat as "credible." Department of Homeland Security officials, along with members of the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, have briefed a small group of corporate security officers from the hotel and restaurant industries about it. "We...