EDF Health

FDA’s short-sighted approach to building trust in the safety of cell-cultured meat and seafood products

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: June 17, 2021

Tom Neltner, J.D., is Chemicals Policy Director

Consumer trust that products are safe to eat is essential to acceptance of any innovative food product.

One of the most innovative food products expected to enter U.S. markets in coming years is cell-cultured meat and seafood. Producing these products by culturing cells in tanks and forming them into foods that look and taste like their conventionally produced counterparts is a technological achievement. Proponents enthusiastically tout these products as climate-friendly alternatives that provide real hope to meet the world’s growing demand for animal protein in a sustainable way that also minimizes animal welfare concerns.

Consumer trust that products are safe to eat is essential to acceptance of any innovative food product. That trust is built through a rigorous, transparent, and independent scientific review to ensure safety. Without that, questions linger that undermine widespread consumer adoption.

Unfortunately, we have serious concerns that the process the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may be planning to use to review the safety of cell-cultured meat and seafood is inadequate and will undermine consumer trust. From our perspective, the manufacturing process for cell-cultured meat and seafood is a significant departure from current practice and warrants careful scrutiny. FDA guidance is clear that, for these types of changes, the appropriate review options are a food additive petitions or the voluntary Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notification process. We strongly recommend FDA rely on these existing options existing options rather than create a new approach.

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The fight to end lead poisoning in Rhode Island: A conversation with Laura Brion

By Sam Lovell / Published: June 7, 2021

The most common causes of lead poisoning in children in the US are lead-based paint and contaminated dust, which are mainly found in older housing. When present, lead pipes also present the single largest source of lead exposure through water. In Rhode Island, an estimated 80% of the housing was built before 1978, meaning it’s more likely to have lead-based paint hazards and lead pipes and put families, especially children, living in the homes at risk.

The Childhood Lead Action Project was founded in 1992 to take on this challenge, with the mission of eliminating childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island through education, parent support, and advocacy. The organization does it all: workshops and educational outreach for a wide range of audiences, municipal and state-level advocacy to push proactive policies, grassroots campaigning, and more.

I sat down with Laura Brion, who started as a community organizer with the Childhood Lead Action Project and is now the Executive Director, to learn about her journey into the lead poisoning prevention world and what she sees ahead for her organization’s and community’s fight.   

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

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Lead pipes are in the news – Here’s why that matters

By Sam Lovell / Published: April 19, 2021

Sam Lovell, Communications Manager. 

“How many of you know, when you send your child to school, the fountain they’re drinking out of is not fed by a lead pipe?”

That stark question was posed by President Biden in a briefing following the announcement of the American Jobs Plan. The President’s historic infrastructure package includes $45 billion to fully replace lead pipes across the country. This has caused a surge of attention nationally on the problem of lead pipes, as administration officials and members of Congress voice support of the plan and local media outlets report on the implications of the investment.

And this attention is well-placed: across the country, an estimated 9.2 million lead service lines still provide water to US homes – putting children at risk of lead exposure and permanent harm to their brain development. While this has been an issue for far too long, this recent momentum – with the inclusion of funding in the American Jobs Plan and in several bills moving in both the House of Representatives and the Senate – is a promising sign that action is near.

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Spotlighting advocates for environmental justice: LaTricea Adams with Black Millennials for Flint

By Sam Lovell / Published: February 11, 2021

LaTricea Adams credits her background as an educator with motivating and shaping her community advocacy work. For five years, Adams taught Spanish to middle and high school students in Nashville, Tennessee.

Now, she’s the Founder Chief Executive Officer and President of Black Millennials for Flint (BM4F) – a grassroots, environmental justice and civil rights organization with the purpose of bringing like-minded organizations together to collectively take action and advocate against the crisis of lead exposure specifically in African American and Latino communities throughout the nation.

Last month, we sat down (virtually) with Adams to learn about her experience advocating for environmental justice.

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FDA’s Failure on Food Chemical Safety Leaves Consumers at Risk of Chronic Diseases

By Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals Initiative / Published: September 23, 2020

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Consultant

Update: FDA published the citizen petition upon receipt on 9/23, and is requesting public comment.

More than 60 years ago, Congress enacted legislation requiring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the food industry to evaluate the cumulative effects of substances in the diet that have related health impacts when assessing the safety of chemical additives. In our decade of analyzing FDA and industry actions, we have been increasingly concerned that both have ignored this requirement. To figure it out, we investigated all safety determinations contained in Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notifications voluntarily submitted by food manufacturers to FDA since the program began in 1997. We looked at GRAS notices because they are publicly available and because FDA rules explicitly require that food manufacturers include in the notice an explanation of how they considered the requirement. If there was an omission, it would be more easily noticeable.

We found that in only one of 877 GRAS notices did a food manufacturer consider the cumulative effect requirement in a meaningful way. And we found no evidence that the agency either recognized this single attempt to follow the law or had objected to the omissions in the 876 other notices. This failure has significant consequences for public health, particularly for communities who already face significant health and socio-economic disparities, and for children, who are uniquely susceptible to dietary exposures to multiple chemicals.

For this reason, EDF joined with other health, environmental, and consumer groups to file a formal petition to demand FDA and food manufacturers start following the law. The petition requests specific changes to rules designed to reinforce the existing requirement and make it easier to verify compliance. Still, given the lack of transparency in agency reviews, success still largely depends on FDA and the food industry taking seriously the mandate and the food safety implications.

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Hurricanes Coming: Protecting Black and Brown Neighborhoods from a “Triple Whammy”

By Elena Craft, PhD / Published: June 17, 2020

Elena Craft, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Climate and Health

This is the first in a series of Global Clean Air blogs on COVID-19 and air pollution. EDF scientists will share data about pollution levels during quarantine from a local and global perspective, and provide recommendations for governments and companies to Rebuild Better.

A black man who lived most of his 88 years in Pleasantville was one of the first Houstonians to die from COVID-19.

James C. Campbell, Source: ABC13.com Houston

His name was James C. Campbell. He raised a family in one of the first neighborhoods in the city planned for black Houstonians, Pleasantville, which has been surrounded in the years since it was founded by congested interstates, salvage yards, metal recyclers, and a sprawling brewery where heavy trucks come and go day and night. Pleasantville residents still share stories about where they were when chemicals in warehouses exploded in the 1990s and forced them to flee their neighborhood for safety.

Just days after Campbell’s funeral in early April, as the coronavirus started to spread across Texas, UT Health researchers mapped neighborhoods across Houston like Pleasantville where residents suffering from underlying health conditions and from years of exposure to air pollution were at increased risk from the worst impacts of a COVID infection. The intention was clear: Data could help local government leaders decide how, and where, to marshal resources to protect the health of those who needed it most.

Disasters do not impact neighborhoods equally, data like that show. It’s clear during the coronavirus pandemic, just as it was clear during past disasters like Hurricane Harvey. In 2017, for example, in the first, and worst days of the storm, 93 percent of all known toxic emissions in all of Harris County were released within a four-mile radius of the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood Manchester — an area that includes Pleasantville — even though it makes up less than 5 percent of the county geographically.

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