The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Consumers, businesses need to reject single-use food packaging, group says

Consumers overlook the environmental impact of food packaging, an analysis by FoodPrint, an organization that studies food production practices, reports.

“If concern about climate change, the environment, or your personal health are motivating factors for you when it comes to deciding what you eat, it’s important to realize that those same issues are factors when it comes to food packaging,” Jerusha Klemperer, director of FoodPrint, said.

Klemperer said massive environmental issues occur with the way food packaging is made and with how much consumers use and throw away, adding dangerous materials also are present in food packaging.

Top consumer stories for 2019

As usual, most of the end-of-the-year, round-up articles are about national issues or corporations. If consumers are mentioned, it’s usually about how they’re responding to some corporation.

For the most part, it’s been a grim year for consumers. With the Trump administration that is so probusiness and anti-consumer, the not much is happening for consumers that's positive.

1. President Donald Trump is impeached.

We have a president who puts his personal interests above the public interest. He tried to bribe the Ukrainian president to get him to investigate a political rival. As a result, he’s been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. This is incredible.

How a percentage of the American can support Trump is a great mystery to me. He and his administration announce anti-consumer proposals almost daily.

In addition, we have a president who lies. Since he was elected, Trump has told more than 15,000 false or misleading claims. In 2019, he’s said that the U.S. economy today is the best in history, he passed the biggest tax cut in history, the U.S. has lost money on trade deficits, article II of the Constitution lets him do whatever he wants, windmills cause cancer, and toilet flushes are up. All are untrue.

2. Consumer rights and programs are under continual attack from President Trump and his administration.

The Republican conservatives want to reduce the size of government and give corporations more power. Almost daily, we read about how the Trump administration has done it or is planning to do it. Some examples include:

• The Trump administration’s decision to roll back light bulb standards will cost consumers billions.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rule speeding up pork lines and reducing inspectors endangers the lives and safety of consumers and workers. 
• Corporations keep breaking the law due to declining federal prosecutions.
• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and seven states launch an “innovation network” that will approve new, risky financial products and protect them from enforcement.
• The CFPB fails consumers by not carrying out the payday lending rule.
• Fewer children’s products were recalled in 2018.
• Under Trump, enforcement of consumer financial laws drops sharply, especially in areas with the highest complaints.

The list goes on and on. Government regulations and programs help consumers. Reducing the size of government and slashing consumer regulations just helps corporations make more profits at the expense of consumers.

Hard-boiled eggs from Almark Foods’ Gainesville plant are being recalled due to link to listeria outbreak

Almark Foods is recalling bulk, fresh hard-boiled eggs that were produced by its plant in Gainesville, Georgia, due to a multistate outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections linked to the eggs, the company announced Friday.

Seven people infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes have been reported in five states – Florida, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Four were hospitalized, with one death occurring in Texas.

The illnesses occurred between April 2017 and Nov. 12, 2019.

Eight consumers sickened in three states from E. coli linked to Fresh Express Sunflower Crisp chopped salad kits

State and federal agencies are investigating a multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to Fresh Express Sunflower Crisp chopped salad kits. The eight people infected are from North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Consumers shouldn’t eat food from the salad kits with this identifying information: UPC 0 71279 30906 4, beginning with lot code Z, and a best-before date up to and including 07DEC19. This information is printed on the front of the bag in the top right corner.

Health officials advise consumers to check their refrigerators for the salad kits. If they find one, they should:

• Not eat it. Throw it away. Even if some of the kit was eaten and no one got sick, throw the rest away.
• Wash and sanitize drawers or shelves in refrigerators where the salad kit was stored. Follow these five steps to clean your refrigerator.

Eating organic food for a week can reduce pesticide levels in the body, study shows

I’m a big proponent of organic foods. My dad, Minor H. Slingsby, died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was a farmer. I didn’t know non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was linked to pesticide exposure when my dad was diagnosed with the disease. None of his doctors in Central Washington state said anything about it. I learned about the connection when listening to a National Public Radio story. It said the children of farmworkers were being diagnosed with high levels of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma because they were in fields sprayed with pesticides with their parents.

I buy most of my food at my local food co-op, with as much as possible of it being organic. I have immune system problems, so organic food is helpful to me.

This recent study adds to the evidence of how organic food benefits people.

A study done at the University of California found that eating organically-grown food for one week can significantly reduce the levels of pesticide in the body. Researchers found the levels of toxins decreased by an average of 60.5 percent after six days of eating organic food.

USDA rule speeding up pork lines and reducing inspectors should be set aside, consumer group and union argue

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rule lifting the lid on line speeds and reducing the number of government safety inspectors by 40 percent at pork slaughter and processing plants should be set aside, lawyers from Public Citizen and United Food and Commercial Workers said in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court.

Thousands of commenters told the USDA during the rulemaking process that the rule would endanger the lives and safety of consumers and workers. Comments also offered dozens of peer-reviewed studies and expert analyses showing that the USDA’s changes would put plant workers, who already are in one of the most dangerous jobs in America, at increased risk of injuries.

In its final rule, the USDA didn’t dispute this evidence. Instead, the agency refused to consider the impact of its actions on worker safety, despite having considered it in the past, and said that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration should consider worker injuries instead.

How the meat industry pressures federal regulators for less inspection, which compromises the safety of the food supply – Part 3

This is the third article in a three-part series on meat inspection. Part 1 reports on tours I took of two beef facilities, a slaughterhouse and a meat processing plant. Part 2 includes interviews with those who favor and oppose new USDA inspection procedures and proposals that reduce the amount of inspection from federal meat inspectors. The articles were written when I was a consumer food columnist for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. The articles were rejected by newspaper editors and never published.

It was a huge surprise this spring when I read articles that the Trump administration was proposing rules for pig slaughter that would speed up production lines, giving less time to spot contamination, and permit pork processing plants to operate with fewer federal inspectors, putting more of the responsibility to ensure food safety on the companies themselves.

These were among proposals made under the Reagan administration in 1984 to cut costs that I wrote about.

How the meat industry pressures federal regulators for less inspection, which compromises the safety of the food supply – Part 2

This is the second article in a three-part series on meat inspection. The article was written in 1984 and submitted to The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, where I worked as a consumer food columnist, but it was never published. I’m posting the article on my blog to show that the meat industry has been pressuring federal regulators for decades to reduce inspection by government inspectors.

Article 1 in the series, “How the Meat Industry Pressures Federal Regulators for Less Inspection, Which Compromises the Safety of the Food Supply – Part 1,” describes my tours of Washington Beef’s slaughterhouse in Toppenish and processing plant in Union Gap.

Article 2 includes interviews with those who favor and oppose the new USDA inspection procedures.

Consumer Reports replies to Impossible Foods’ criticism of its article on the company’s beef substitute burger

Photo: Sarah Stierch

On Monday, I went with a group of colleagues to a local restaurant for a meeting. The menu said you could get an Impossible Burger for $2 more in any of its burger options. Knowing I was going to post the Consumer Reports reply to Impossible Foods’s article about them, I wanted to try one. However, I was told the Impossible burger wasn’t available. The company hasn’t been able to keep up with production to meet all the new demand. Disappointing.

Here’s the Consumer Reports statement on Impossible Foods’ beef with its critique:

In response to Consumer Reports’ recent article “Meat Gets A Makeover” focusing on plant-based alternatives to traditional beef burgers, Rachel Konrad – Impossible Foods’ PR chief – published an inflammatory and misleading attack on the motivations and methods behind our coverage of the safety of a key ingredient in the Impossible Burger. Oddly enough, she seems out for blood about an article that very fairly compares several plant-based alternatives based on taste, safety, and environmental impact.

Don’t eat undercooked beef or soft cheeses made from raw milk, consumer group advises, because inspection laws allow meat and poultry contaminated with salmonella to be sold to the public

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report Thursday describing an ongoing investigation into an outbreak of illnesses caused by a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Newport. Between June 2018 and March 2019, the CDC identified 255 cases in 32 U.S. states, which resulted in at least 60 hospitalizations and two deaths. The investigation is continuing, and agencies are recommending that consumers avoid undercooked beef and soft cheeses made with raw milk.

Consumer advocates are concerned that the outbreak may spread, because food safety regulators continue to allow companies to sell beef contaminated with the strain of Salmonella Newport in the outbreak, said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service has detected the outbreak strain, or “closely related” strains, in three samples at one or more Texas slaughter and processing facilities. However, under current regulations, the agency doesn’t consider beef containing these pathogens to be adulterated, or prohibit it from being sold to consumers.