I have been a fan of Chin Jou’s work for a long time and did a blurb for her latest book:

Captive Consumers is a tough, uncompromising, and utterly compelling analysis of the ways America’s mass incarceration system uses food as punishment, and must become more humane.

From the publisher:

Using a wealth of sources from untapped historical records to prison newspapers, Jou excavates the voices of the incarcerated and shows that prison food dehumanizes the imprisoned, compounds racial and class inequalities, and induces more violence—ultimately making carceral institutions more dangerous. But this compelling book also illuminates how people behind bars have reasserted their identities, resourcefulness, and humanity through self-prepared food even as prison food services profit from lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts that reward cost-cutting over care. If US corrections systems continue to perpetuate physical and psychological violence through food, Jou argues, Americans will suffer not just wasted tax dollars but the cost of bringing traumatized, ailing, and hungry formerly incarcerated people back into society.

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The Complaint seeks to block Darwin’s from selling adulterated drugs; it argues that Darwin’s raw pet foods are adulterated because they:

• Bear or contains a poisonous or deleterious substance, such as Salmonella, which may render the food injurious to health. Contain Salmonella and/or STEC.
• FDA previously issued warning letters to Darwin’s about this problem.
• Continue to test positive for pathogens.
• Are introduced into interstate commerce.

What’s amazing about this is that the current administration’s Department of Justice is taking on pet food.  If only it would do that for our food too!

II.  Concentration in pet food [from Pet Food Industry]. Two companies, Mars Petcare and Nestlé Purina PetCare, together account for approximately 78% of the top 10’s nearly $66 billion in combined annual revenue.

III.Recalls in the pet space reveal common prevention blind spots [from Pet Food Industry].   Industry experts say most recalls trace back to overlooked process changes, thin supplier oversight and mock recall exercises that stop short of testing a company’s full response.  Read more

In the pet food, supplements and treats space, recalls tied to undeclared allergens, foreign material and Salmonella contamination have made headlines throughout 2026…Roger Hancock of Recall InfoLink said the numbers back up what he’s seen for years. Over the past two decades, more than 3,900 pet food and animal feed recalls have occurred, averaging around 15 a month, he said.

Why do these keep happening?  Companies are not careful enough about developing food safety plans and monitoring that they are working.

Companies often tend to collect a lot of information but don’t do anything with it…citing environmental test results, cleaning records and third-party audit findings as examples.

IV,  Three Illnesses Now Reported in the Oma’s Pride Raw Dog Food Salmonella Recall. People or Dogs? The Notice Does Not Say [From Bill Marler’s Blog].

FDA has re-posted the company announcement…Here is the reason for recall: FDA received a consumer complaint, then collected and analyzed a sample of the product, and it tested positive for Salmonella. And here is the illness information, in its entirety: “Three illnesses have been reported to date in association with the complaint.”

That is the whole disclosure. Three illnesses. The notice does not say whether they were people or dogs.

…The agency’s own Center for Veterinary Medicine screened more than a thousand pet food samples over two years and found raw pet food far more likely than any other kind to carry Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes — 38 of 196 raw samples positive for one or both. FDA’s advice ever since has been blunt: the single best way to avoid these infections is not to feed a raw diet.

…If someone in your house has been sick, or your dog has, call the doctor or the veterinarian and say the words “raw pet food” out loud…It is also, on this record, the only way anyone will ever learn whether those three illnesses walked on two legs or four.

Comment

I write frequently about pet food because it is part of the human food system.  If something is wrong with it, something is wrong with the system that produces our food too.  Food, no matter who or what it is for, should be produced safely.  It’s hard to do that with raw foods; they require extra-special efforts to prevent contamination with pathogens.

Addition, August 21

I’ve just discovered Pet Food Safety News, via Mollie Morrissette’s discussion of Darwin’s long history of safety problems.

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I was interested to see this report.  Here’s why this matters:

As can be seen, concentration across all six sectors remains high. Five of them – seeds, pesticides, machinery, animal pharma and pig genetics – meet the definition of an oligopoly, in which four companies control more than 40% of a market. So too does the global market for phosphate fertilisers. While the world grapples with the climate and biodiversity crises, rising hunger levels, geopolitical conflict and another looming food crisis, a handful of large companies continue to hold enormous power over our food system.

And here’s a quick summary:

Comment

What ever happened to trust-busting?  Bring it back!

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To learn more about the working adults who used these programs in 2024, we analyzed employment data from 11 states and Census data.

We found:

• About two-thirds worked full time
• Most worked for private sector employers
• Workers were largely in transportation, restaurants and food prep, and retail sales jobs
• Some employers in selected states had thousands of beneficiaries on their payrolls

This is one of the findings:

According to GAO’s analysis of state-level data for September 2025, the employers with the most nondisabled, nonelderly Medicaid enrollees or SNAP beneficiaries varied across the 11 states that provided data. However, 46 companies (about one-third of the total companies across all 11 states) were among the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees or SNAP beneficiaries in at least two states. Seventeen of these 46 companies were among the 50 largest Fortune 500 companies by number of employees.

Here is an example of some actual data:

Comment

What this report tells us is that the richest food companies in the United States are paying such low wages that their employees must rely on government assistance to get by.  This means that we taxpayers are subsidizing rich corporations and enabling them to continue to profit at the expense of their workers.  I didn’t see much written about this report when it appeared.  It deserves wide circulation.

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• The Study: Minimally processed, human-grade diet alters canine epigenetic ageing: Results from a pilot study. Aimee Chen, Wei Guo, Janina A. Krumbeck, Dan Su, Vincent Michels, Xiaojing Yang.  First published: 05 August 2026.  https://doi.org/10.1002/vro2.70047

• Results: Dogs fed with MPHGF diet [minimally processed, human-grade food] exhibited a significant reduction in delta age, decreasing from 2.75 to 1.80 years over 6 months (p = 0.02), indicating a trend of slowed epigenetic ageing. In contrast, dogs fed with EDK diet [extruded dry kibble] exhibited no significant change in epigenetic ageing (p = 0.86).

• Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential for dietary interventions to influence epigenetic ageing in dogs and provides a practical, quantitative framework for investigating healthy ageing in companion animals.

• Funding: This study was funded by JustFoodForDogs, Inc. and involved food provided by the company.

• Conflict of interest: The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest. Dan Su and Vincent Michels are employees of JustFoodforDogs who funded the study.

Comment: I hardly know what to make of the Conflict of Interest statement here.  The authors declare no COI, but they are employed by the funder of the study, JustFoodForDogs, which has much to gain from demonstrating that its products improve dog longevity.  The authors must not consider this a COI.  I do.

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From the press release

The good news

Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible.

The not-so-good news

However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The report emphasizes cost issues

Healthy diets are essential to achieving SDG 2, but remain economically out of reach for large segments of the global population. In the context of persistent cost-of-living pressures, reducing the cost of a healthy diet (CoHD) is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to enhance diet quality, and thus improve nutrition, health and development outcomes.

The high costs come from what happens after foods are produced

Post-farmgate activities account for 70 to 75 percent of what consumers pay, with up to 40 percent of value chain costs accumulating in midstream processing, logistics and wholesale. Improving efficiency at these stages is essential for lowering the prices of perishable foods that compose
healthy diets.

As for what to do

Public spending is most effective when directed towards the higher-cost food groups. Broad fiscal support to already low-cost staples generates limited improvements in overall dietary affordability.

Comment

We still have lots of work to do.

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Safety

The CDC’s web page on pet food safety makes three main points:

• Pet food and treats can sometimes be contaminated with germs that make people and pets sick.
• CDC does not recommend feeding raw pet food or treats to dogs and cats.
• Talk to a veterinarian for advice on how to maintain a safe and healthy diet for your pet.

The FDA’s webpage on pet food recalls lists 12 in 2026 so far.   Of these,

• 3 are due to foreign contaminants
• 5 are due to inappropriate levels of vitamin D or thiamine
• 4 are caused by listeria, salmonella, or other microbial contamination

Examples:

• APHA reveals Salmonella findings in animals and pet food: Reports of Salmonella in raw meat-based pet food in the United Kingdom have declined again from the record levels seen in 2022.The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) collected data on Salmonella from animals, feeding stuff and animal by-products (ABP) in England, Wales and Scotland. Read the full story
• Darwin’s pet food tests positive for Listeria and Salmonella: The FDA has again found bacterial contamination in Darwin’s Natural Pet Products dog food and the producing company, Arrow Reliance, is again refusing to recall its products. Read the full story

Other issues of interest

• Blog: Humanization vs. anthropomorphism in pet food marketing, formulation: Distinguishing between humanization and anthropomorphism has implications for pet food formulation and marketing. Read more
• Asia’s drug smugglers exploiting pet food as their Trojan Horse: Pet food seen as an innocuous vehicle for those looking to transport drugs over borders. Read more
• Cat owners on diets may be good market for insect-based pet foods: Certain factors may influence which pet owners are willing to give insects a chance as dog and cat food ingredients. Read more

Comment

Pet food, as I keep saying, is a category of the overall food system.  What happens with human foods also occurs in pet foods.  We have one, united food supply.

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At Monday’s MAHA press conference (see yesterday’s post), the FDA announced:

Finally, though not part of today’s announcement, with respect to microbiological food safety, FDA will be publishing tomorrow a final guidance document titled “Guide to Minimize Biological Hazards in ready-to-eat fresh-cut produce.” This final guidance is intended to help manufacturers and processors of fresh-cut produce comply with applicable FDA requirements and 21 CFR Part 117 titles current good manufacturing practices, hazard analysis, and risk-based prevention controls for human food.

The announcement: Guidance: Guide to Minimize Biological Hazards in Ready-to-Eat Fresh-Cut Produce

The guidance represents the current thinking of FDA on this topic. It does not establish any rights for any person and is not binding on FDA or the public. You can use an alternative approach if it satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations.

The announcement says the new guidance will:

• Update, correct, and clarify the FDA’s 2018 Guide to Minimize Food Safety Hazards of Fresh-Cut Produce
• Clarify that the guidance applies only to ready-to-eat fresh-cut produce with a water activity above 0.85 (a water content high enough to support microbial growth)
• Add another example of an antimicrobial substance that can be used as a process control in the production of fresh-cut produce
• Provide additional examples of a supply chain program to control pathogens in a fresh-cut processing facility
• Provide additional recommendations on time/temperature controls

The new guidance: Guide to Minimize Biological Hazards in Ready-to-Eat Fresh-Cut Produce: Guidance for Industry

These are nonbinding recommendations.

They are aimed at processors and manufacturers, not growers.

They deal with contaminants on produce entering the processing plants and with those that might occur during processing, as a result of:

• Unclean water supply
• Poor worker hygiene
• Inadequate plumbing and sewage disposal
• Inadequate hand washing
• Inadequate product washing

They also cover such matters as supplier verification: conducting hazard analyses, onsite audits, sampling, and testing.

Comment

What they do not do is say anything about irrigation water, the most likely cause of the Cyclospora outbreak.

Here is Bill Marler on the FDA’s recent history of inadequate attention to irrigation water.

Pre-harvest agricultural water is the clearest case of an element written and then withdrawn. The 2015 rule set a geometric mean of no more than 126 colony-forming units of generic E. coli per 100 mL and required growers to test against it. The compliance dates were pushed back, enforcement discretion was announced before the first of them arrived, and in May 2024 the criterion and the testing requirement were replaced outright by an annual assessment in which the grower evaluates his own water and decides for himself what to do about it. I walked through that record this week in connection with the jalapeños out of Sinaloa. Nine years, three delays and a repeal, and not one farm ever had to hit the number.

Let’s hope the FDA gets on this.

It also needs to do a whole lot more than nonbinding guidance.

The FDA needs the authority to require companies to produce food safely, and hold them accountable if they do not.

If it does not have this authority, it needs to get Congress to authorize it.

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This wasn’t already required?  No, it was not.  This gap is the long-troubling “GRAS loophole.”

Here’s what the press release says (my emphasis):

The FDA issued a proposed rule that would require manufacturers to notify the agency whenever they conclude that the use of a substance added to human or animal food is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). The proposal would modernize the GRAS framework, increase transparency, and give the FDA greater visibility into substances entering the food supply.

Since Congress established the GRAS exemption in 1958, manufacturers have been permitted to reach their own conclusions that certain substances are generally recognized as safe under the conditions of their intended use.

Although the FDA has long operated voluntary notification programs, companies have not been required to notify the agency when making these determinations.

The proposed rule would modernize that framework by making GRAS notifications mandatory and expanding the public-facing inventory of submitted notices, significantly improving transparency while strengthening FDA’s ability to oversee ingredients entering the food supply.

For substances already on the market based on industry self-GRAS conclusions, the proposal would establish a time-limited streamlined submission pathway that would allow manufacturers to provide FDA with information about existing uses. This enables the agency to prioritize post-market safety evaluations while minimizing unnecessary regulatory burden.

Comment 

Food advocates for years have called for making GRAS notifications mandatory.  So this move is obvious, and long-awaited.

A reporter sent me an AI transcript of the press conference, which says how this will work (again, my emphasis).

What FDA will do is review a notification within 45 days to ensure that the elements required are in there. We’ll then docket that notification satisfying the requirement. FDA will then, within 180 days, review that notification substantively. If we have issues, we may either send a no questions letter or we may send we may send a letter determining that we don’t believe that the threshold has been established. But again, this is not a pre-market notification program. Companies are not prohibited from entering the market during the tenancy of that process, and they can continue to self-GRAS. What it does is require that companies notify us whenever they are self-GRASing an ingredient, and then we’re going to make that limited information public that’s set more than the regulation in 170.275.

So what’s the big deal?  Well, it’s the first food regulation proposed by the MAHA administration, and it closes the GRAS loophole.

What it does NOT do is keep unsafe additives out of the food supply.  Companies still have plenty of leeway to put whatever they want in their products.  This is not pre-market approval.  The FDA says it has no statutory authority to require that.

So why not go for it when you have the chance?  Despite the MAHA hoopla over the announcement, as Jerry Mande puts it, all this does is continue the FDA’s non-enforcement.

Another question: Does the FDA even have the staff to review food additive submissions, given the thousands who were fired or left?

Making GRAS notifications mandatory is a good thing to do.  Will doing this Make America Healthy Again?  A little, maybe, but it will be extremely hard to prove.

The big, easy-to-demonstrate food safety problems are ultra-processed foods (the FDA says it has sent an as yet unrevealed definition to OMB), and pathogenic microbes, like Cyclospora, with upwards of 25,000m cases so far, hundreds of hospitalizations, and at least two deaths.

And no, Cyclospora is not a food industry conspiracy to keep people from eating real foods–that idea is weird and unsupported by evidence.

Indeed, the FDA says:

Finally, though not part of today’s announcement, with respect to microbiological food safety, FDA will be publishing tomorrow a final guidance document titled “Guide to Minimize Biological Hazards And ready-to-eat fresh-cut produce. This final guidance is intended to help manufacturers and processors of fresh-cut produce comply with applicable FDA requirements and 21 CFR Part 117 titles current good manufacturing practices, hazard analysis, and risk-based prevention controls for human food.

Can’t wait to see this.  Stay tuned.

Resources

• The press release
• The transcript of the call with reporters
• The Federal Register notice
• Stat News on this (I’m quoted)
• FoodNavigator report (I’m quoted)
• CNN on MAHA’s GRAS notification requirement (I’m interviewed)

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The study:  Effects of Short-Term Broccoli Powder Supplementation on Acute Oxidative Stress and Recovery Following a Metabolically Demanding Exercise Session. Cesanelli L, Venckunas T, Minderis P, Maconyte V, Stasiulis A, Snieckus A, Mickevicius M, Mickeviciene D, Kamandulis S.  Antioxidants. 2026; 15(3):379. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox15030379

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of short-term broccoli powder supplementation on metabolically demanding exercise performance, muscle power, and blood lactate recovery. It also investigated broccoli powder-derived sulforaphane bioavailability and its effects in attenuating exercise-induced oxidative stress.

Methods: Seventeen healthy males (age 23.8 ± 4.9 years, height 182.3 ± 6.1 cm, weight 80.0 ± 12.8 kg), in a double-blind crossover design, three weeks apart, consumed ten standard doses of either broccoli powder or spinach powder as a placebo over a period of 2 weeks. They then performed a maximal progressive cycling task with concomitant analysis of expired gas composition. Plasma malondialdehyde (MDA) level was measured before and 60 min after the completion of the task, and blood lactate and muscle power (counter-movement vertical jump (CMJ) performance) were measured before and up to 60 min after exercise.

Results: The main findings were that despite urine sulforaphane output being markedly higher following broccoli supplementation (p < 0.05), which confirms effective absorption and systemic availability of the compound, this did not influence exercise-induced changes in plasma MDA concentration, blood lactate dynamics, exercise test performance, or functional recovery measured as muscle power via CMJ performance (p > 0.05).

Conclusions: In conclusion, broccoli powder supplementation, despite efficient delivery of sulforaphane, does not seem to either acutely affect performance or modify oxidative stress and recovery from metabolically demanding exercise.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no personal financial relationships, consultancies, or equity interests related to this work. The Smarter Food Company (Norwich, UK) provided partial funding (unrestricted) and supplied the glucoraphanin-rich broccoli and placebo powder used as the study supplements but had no involvement in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation, manuscript writing, or decision to submit for publication.

Comment: So this was one of those studies where I saw the title and asked: “Who paid for this?”  Why would anyone care about the effects of eating broccoli or spinach powder, when nobody eats such things unless they have to?  The obvious answer: the company that sells such things or is thinking of selling them.  Hence The Smarter Food Company.  But then I expected the study to say that broccoli powder produced miracles, but it does not.  High marks to the Lithuanian authors.

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