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Underreported: New Meat Inspection Rules

The farm bill passed by Congress in July contained a little-noticed provision that would eliminate a 40-year old requirement of federal inspection for meat and poultry sold across the United States. States would then have more authority to inspect meat and poultry. On today’s Underreported, Leonard speaks with Christopher Waldrop, Director of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute, about what the changes mean for consumer safety and for the meat processing industry.

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Underreported: Poultry Antibiotics May Not Be Effective

An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used on farms, mostly in animal feed. Health researchers have long worried that this heavy load of antibiotics is causing strains of bacteria to evolve that are impervious to the drugs. Plus, these resistant bacteria can pass on resistance to other bacteria and infect humans. Farmers have long justified using growth-promoting antibiotics on the grounds that fatter birds mean fatter profits. But a groundbreaking study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has undermined this argument. On today’s Underreported, Leonard speaks with Dr. Mary Pearl, President of Wildlife Trust, about this serious public health issue.

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Underreported: Nanosilver

The EPA recently issued a ruling that a Samsung washing machine must be regulated as a pesticide. That's because the washing machine, the "Silvercare" model, claims to kill germs by injecting 100 quadrillion silver ions into each wash load. The wastewater would be released into public water systems, and there have been questions about the safety of widespread nanosilver use. On today's Underreported, we'll look into potential misuses of nanotechnology.

Leonard speaks with Dr. Jennifer Sass, Senior Scientist in the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Health and Environment Program. Also, Dr. Samuel Luoma, senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

A recent article in the NRDC's On Earth magazine explores the safety of nanosilver; you can read it here.

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