Frustrated House Panel Threatens to Subpoena FDA
WASHINGTON - A Congressional committee on Thursday threatened to subpoena the Food and Drug Administration unless the agency responds to lawmakers’ requests for documents about U.S. drug and food safety.
Rep. John Dingell, the Democratic chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, accused the FDA of dragging its feet in responding to his panel’s oversight subcommittee. 
If the FDA does not comply by June 1, Dingell said the panel would issue subpoenas to obtain the information.
The FDA said it was cooperating with lawmakers.
“FDA has been as responsive as possible to document requests from Chairman Dingell and other members of Congress,” an FDA spokeswoman said. “We continue to focus our efforts on producing responsive material to our Oversight committee’s requests as expeditiously as possible.”
Since January, the committee has asked the FDA to provide documents about generic drug approvals, an outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, post-market surveillance of the antibiotic Ketek, contamination of pet food with ingredients imported from China, and antibiotic resistance linked to wide use of drugs in farm animals.
“The delays and the quality of responses to the committee’s requests concerning FDA are unacceptable,” Dingell said in a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt. Leavitt’s department oversees the FDA.
Dingell also complained that in some instances, the FDA turned over redacted records to the committee without any prior consultations about the redactions.
Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited.
At the same time, they are taking away the rights of individual states to control food safety. The new farm bill will have federal standards only. This means that states cannot control planting of GM crops. They may also be unable to recall contaminated food. It’s all up to the federal government. Who trusts them?
See:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5369.cfm
What exactly is holding them up? Not enough temps manning the photocopier? Simple incompetence? Or something more sinister?
As long as agribusiness runs the FDA what do you expect?
I have a vegetable garden. We eat better, cheaper and with no pesticides. Any food we get from the garden dilutes the bad effects in the rest of the food supply.
There are three basic problems facing the FDA and the combination of the three renders them, at best, a symbol of food/medication safety. The first is that in many of the areas where they’re supposed to ensure safety they have little or no authority to really do anything other than maybe finger point and say “bad, bad, company”. The second is that there’s little emphasis on or requirement for the FDA’s officers or researchers having proper independence of the sort that guarantees no conflict of interest. Finally, they’re vastly underfunded - even if they had employees free of conflict of interest and the authority to do what we expect them to do, they don’t have a budget that would allow them to even begin to do their work or to hire enough employees.
I just wish that while they’re at it, the Congressional oversight committee would also do some asking as to why we’ve had so many medications - and even classes of medications - making it onto the market only to find out as long as years later the medications had major, potentially deadly side effects. Medications shouldn’t be worse than the illness they treat or cause new illnesses. Neurological, psychiatric, metabolic and cardiovascular side effects should be known BEFORE products hit the market and unless freakishly rare they should cause the product to carry serious warnings.
“What exactly is holding them up? Not enough temps manning the photocopier? Simple incompetence?”
Um… corruption? Just a guess.
How possible is it to be responsive when you have so much to hide? When I read how the FDA and the AMA colluded to destroy Royal Raymond Rife, I was through with these guys.
The Menu Foods scandal involved the fraudulent (not accidental) dumping of industrial waste into vegetable proteins, at concentrations exceeding 5% in some cases. Toxic sludge is good for you, and good for Fido too. The opacity of the feed industry precluded anyone finding out, before this happened, that almost all pet-food brands (more than 100) originated from the same source. If anyone out there thinks that the food industry is any more decentralized, responsible, or well-regulated than the feed industry, then you are basing personal health decisions on unexamined assumptions. Living in a fool’s paradise.
In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. Examples:
* Pharmaceuticals restore health
* Vaccination brings immunity
* The cure for cancer is just around the corner
* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
* Hospitals are safe and clean.
* America has the best health care in the world.
* And many many more
This is a list of illusions, that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?
http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/15/perception.htm
Plenty of time to harass people who want to use vitamins to keep themselves healthy.
The hold up is they have no paperwork. Heaven forbid if someone in a government agency can be accountible for anything unless it is their latest pay raise or obtaining employment for their friends and family.
The government started this increased productivity crape and now that they are expected to produce they cannot cut it.
Just what is an allowable limit? A little bit of any chemical can do harm.
They are all crooks.
If you think food safety is bad now, read back to what it was like before there was an FDA. They need clean up, power, and funding — not to be wiped from existence. I would rather not take all the checks off food producers who are sloppy even under regulated conditions.
*BREAKING NEWS: FDA Contacts Citizens for Health Executive Director,
Announces Re-opening of Comment Period for CAM Guidance*
*For Release May 23rd, 2007*
*CONTACT: Frank Herd, Jr, 612.879.7583*
*Washington, DC & Minneapolis, Minnesota* – Citizens for Health
following is the comment I submitted. Anyone who would
like to fashion their comments in a similar manner
have my permission.
Many Americans use dietary supplements to improve
their quality of life. These supplements are often
more effective than drug therapy, less expensive, and
have far fewer and less consequential side-effects.
When people are looking for a natural remedy, they
often make inquiries to professionals who are learned
in the field of natural cures and remedies. To make it
illegal for citizens to seek and recieve natural cures
and the help of professionals trained in this field is
unconstitutional. This is a ploy to force everyone to
use the drugs provided by big Pharma. This idea should
be abandoned immediately.
Executive
Director, Frank Herd, Jr, reports that he received a call today from
the FDA
assuring him that they have reopened the comment period on their
“Guidance
for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and
Their
Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. As stated in a notice
in
the *Federal Register*, they will accept comments through May 29th “due
to
confusion as to the closing date for comments on the draft guidance.”
(Read
the notice
here).
This means that the agency is honoring the deadline they posted in
April,
but later retracted, citing it had been posted due to an employee
error.
*To send your comments, click
here
.*
“The FDA’s main contact on the proposed guidance, Philip Chao, called
to let
us know the moment the comment period was re-opened and the amended
deadline
was posted on their site,” Mr. Herd said. “We immediately verified
this,
and now encourage anyone in the natural health community that is
concerned
about the potential implications of the proposed guidance to take this
opportunity to ensure your voice is heard – there are only a few days
left!”
*Click
hereto
send your comments now!
*
“The FDA had already received more than 125,000 comments on this
proposed
guidance, mostly negative, when I spoke with Mr. Chao 3 weeks ago.
Since
then, more than 8000 Citizens for Health members responded to our call
for
emails to the FDA urging them to honor the May 29th deadline,” Mr. Herd
added. “This is clearly a grassroots victory for Citizens for Health,
its
constituents, and the natural health movement as a whole.”
The deadline is only a few days away – send your comments now!**
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c= AITiU0KeWVuOoD%2F9NLddfIM1ek%2FKNpSc
The link to send comments- I’m not sure why it didn’t show up in previous post
trying again to post links
comments: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/oc/dockets/comments/COMMENTSMain.CFM?EC_DOCUMENT_ID=1564&SUBTYP=CONTINUE&CID=&AGENCY=FDA
read the article:
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/06d-0480-nec0001.pdf
Do you read the labels? Why must most stores sell Garlic from China? And the list goes on. Makes one wonder just what is good food anymore. As for garlic, aren’t Americans quite capable of producing garlic for instance that is safe and free from chemicals without resorting to buying garlic from China. I don’t want any food that comes from China for me or my pets, but then I guess I will have to grow all of my food. Can you believe, garlic.