FOOD
Meat-labeling law repeal leaves buyers in the dark
It’s now harder to find out where your beef or pork was born, raised and slaughtered.
Lawmakers said last week they had no choice but to get rid of meat labels after the World Trade Organization repeatedly ruled against them.
The repeal was a big defeat for lawmakers from northern border states where U.S. ranchers directly compete with Canadian ranchers. Those lawmakers insisted on including the labeling in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills and this year fought to replace it with a voluntary program once the WTO rulings were revealed. But after years of success, they were not able to find enough support.
Roger Johnson of the National Farmers Union, which has heavy membership in those states, said the group was “furious” about the repeal.
“Packers will be able to once again deliberately deceive consumers,” Johnson said.
However, there was some good news for food-labeling advocates in the spending bill. Despite an aggressive push by the food industry, lawmakers decided not to add language that would have blocked mandatory labeling of genetically modified ingredients. Also, a provision by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would require labeling of genetically modified salmon recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The issue is expected to come up again this year, when Vermont is set to require labeling on genetically modified food this summer. — Joana Suleiman
EDUCATION
Feds: Protect Muslim students from bullies
The Department of Education is asking schools and colleges to provide special protection to certain religious and national minorities in the wake of a perceived rise in anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment.
In the “Dear Colleagues” letter sent Dec. 31, the department singled out for protection “those who are, or are perceived to be, Syrian, Muslim, Middle Eastern or Arab, as well as those who are Sikh, Jewish or students of color.”
“School activities should be structured to help students grapple with current events and conflicting viewpoints in constructive ways, and not in ways that result in the targeting of particular students for harassment or blame,” the letter said. The letter stressed that “working to maintain safe learning communities does not, and must not, mean chilling free expression about the issues of the day.”
In 2014, 55 percent of Muslim students experienced bullying because of their religion, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That’s nearly twice as many as the 28 percent of nationwide sixth-12th grade students who experienced bullying. The letter was signed by Arne Duncan, who retired as education secretary at the end of 2015, and John King, who is now acting secretary of education. — Jason Russell
HEALTHCARE
FDA steps up drug approvals
The Food and Drug Administration approved 45 new drugs last year, four more than in 2014.
The increased amount of approvals comes as Congress is pushing the agency to approve even more new drugs and remove barriers to approval.
The FDA noted that the number includes only novel new drugs and not generics, which are copycats of brand-name products.
“We approved many new drugs to treat various forms of cancer, including four to treat multiple myeloma, and others to treat lung, skin, breast, brain, colorectal and other cancers,” said Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation. “This year’s field also includes new drugs to treat heart failure and high cholesterol, as well as the first approved reversal agent for a commonly used blood thinner.”
Woodcock noted that for the second consecutive year, the agency approved more “orphan” drugs for rare diseases, 21, than during any previous year. They’re called “orphans” because they are intended for a small number of patients suffering from those diseases.
The number of approvals last year is still below the record-setting total of 53 in 1996, according to Reuters.
Congress is debating how to make changes to the FDA’s drug approval process. Last year the House passed in an unusually bipartisan fashion a bill intended to speed up approvals of novel drugs and medical devices and boost funding for medical research. This year the Senate is considering its own version of the bill. — Robert King
ENERGY
Is fusion in the future?
After the global climate change agreement was reached last month in Paris, more people began talking about the prospects for fusion energy.
Yes, fusion. It’s a thermonuclear solution to the world’s energy needs that people have been saying they are close to for decades. The fusion reaction, rather than splitting an atom to release energy, fuses a particle together the same way the sun does with hydrogen to produce an unlimited stream of energy.
The U.S. government has been sinking money into an international fusion project, known as ITER, with a prototype reactor being built in Europe. Even though Republicans and Democrats complain each time the request for ITER money comes, it always gets approved to continue U.S. interest in the project.
That’s because every other country continues to fund it, and it may be that U.S. lawmakers don’t want to miss the boat if the rest of the world discovers an unlimited energy source.
The Chicago Tribune published a New Year’s Eve editiorial backing the prospects for fusion. The newspaper names a number of companies aligned with the international effort to look out for in the coming year.
“As this private-sector effort accelerates, expect to begin hearing the names of now-obscure companies — Industrial Heat, Tokamak Energy, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Helion Energy and others hoping to become as dominant in their nascent field as Westinghouse (1886) and General Electric (1892) were in the early electrical industry,” the editorial reads. — John Siciliano
MARIJUANA
Pot bank shot down
In another setback for legal marijuana businesses being forced to operate on a cash-only basis, a judge last week tossed a lawsuit seeking federal approval for the first credit union for marijuana in Colorado, saying that allowing it “would facilitate criminal activity.” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson dismissed the suit because federal law prohibits the drug.
The credit union said that although marijuana remains illegal under federal law, the Federal Reserve as a quasi-government institution lacks the authority to keep marijuana banks out of the nation’s financial system. Mark Mason, an attorney for the credit union, argued in December that a pot bank would serve the government’s interest in keeping better tabs on the drug money.
Jackson noted how bankruptcy courts cannot offer the same protection against creditors for a marijuana business as for another type of business. “The debtors cannot obtain bankruptcy relief because their business activities are federal crimes,” Jackson said, quoting a 10th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Court opinion.
Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, told the Associated Press that Jackson’s ruling sends the message that Congress must act.
“There’s no shortcut, there’s no Band-Aid, there’s no workaround to fix this industry-wide,” he said. “Forcing cannabis businesses to operate without banking access is a crisis, affecting public safety, law-abiding businesses and the state officials in charge of regulating them.” — Joana Suleiman
