USDA official: ‘Shame on Consumer Reports’

An Aug. 29 statement from US Dept. of Agriculture Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety, Carmen Rottenberg discredits Consumer Reports (CR) for recently publishing a story claiming that meat and poultry sold at retail outlets contain drug residues that are harmful to humans. The story claims that drugs prohibited in meat and poultry products, including a “hallucinogenic party drug,” a risky anti-inflammatory, an anemia-linked antibiotic and other banned and restricted drugs, may show up in US meat and poultry products more often than previously known. The CR story said its findings, based on information from the US Dept. of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), “raise serious concerns about the safeguards put in place to protect the US meat supply.” The report goes on to state that the findings, which Rottenberg claims were based on information mistakenly released on March 3, 2018, and that included unconfirmed, preliminary test results from poultry samples, call into question the validity of the federal government’s testing, investigating and enforcement of food safety violations.