The LA Times' Abigail Goldman, who won a Pulitzer for "The Walmart Effect," has done some great reporting on the food safety issues around the apparently endless pet food recall. She did a profile of new FDA "food czar" David Acheson, and she quoted me:
Acheson says he tries to find a balance between informing and disseminating incomplete or inaccurate information. "The goal across the board is to be as transparent as we possibly can and to tell the public what we know and what we don't."
During an investigation, he says, some brand names can't be given out and others shouldn't be until their roles can be verified.
That's one of the key tussles with activists and pet owners. As federal officials try to reassure the public that pet food is safe, critics say, the number of recalls and animals exposed to tainted products continues to rise.
In all, more than 150 brands and more than 5,000 different products have been affected by the recall. Millions of chickens, 56,000 swine and an undetermined number of fish may have eaten tainted feed.
Acheson has declined to name the hog and poultry farms affected by the contaminated feed, and he often doles out other names only after the companies have issued their own recalls.
A dedicated group of animal owners parses Acheson's every public utterance. They scour the Internet for food safety documents and Acheson's public testimony and then post them — along with commentaries — on websites and blogs.
"The tone of his remarks is more meant to reassure than to reform (note from Christie: I actually said "inform"), to restore consumer confidence with words rather than with actions and facts and science," says Christie Keith, a contributing editor for syndicated column Pet Connection and a blogger at PetConnection.com.
Adds Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which researches food safety issues: "They err on the side of calming people instead of saying, 'We don't know'."
Full article here.
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