US Food and Drug Administration Archives

March 11, 2024

Farmers facing PFAS pollution struggle for solutions

By Shannon Kelleher

When Jim Buckle and his wife, Hannah Hamilton, started their 18-acre organic vegetable farm in Unity, Maine more than a decade ago, they wanted to grow the healthiest food possible. But after a wholesale buyer asked them to test their operation for toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2022, the couple was in for a shock.

The soil tests came back clean, as the couple expected. But Buckle’s heart sank when the results arrived for the well water they used to wash and irrigate their vegetables. Through no fault of their own, the farm Buckle and Hamilton had carefully cultivated for nearly a decade was contaminated with PFAS-laced sewage sludge that had been used as fertilizer on land nearby years earlier.

Faced with evidence that their harvests were also likely contaminated with potentially hazardous PFAS toxins, he and Hamilton made the decision to close down their farming operations, at least temporarily, as they wrestled with how they might clean up their farm and protect it from future contamination.

“We said, ‘wow, this is crazy. We actually have this problem,’” Buckle said.

About a year earlier, first-generation organic farmers Katia Holmes and her husband faced a similar crisis on their 700-acre Misty Brook Farm in Albion, Maine, where they raise livestock and grow grains. In their case, the well water was fine, said Holmes. But testing of their cows’ milk – and the hay they bought from a neighbor to feed the cows – came back with elevated levels of PFAS.

Further testing revealed that a previous owner of the Holmes’ land had spread sewer sludge on certain fields 20 years ago, leaving behind PFAS in the soil.

“We called all the stores and pulled all our products,” said Holmes.

Buckle’s and Holmes’ stories are, sadly, becoming more common.

March 1, 2023

In debate over new “healthy” food labeling rules, researchers propose novel metric to guide consumers

By Shannon Kelleher

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should redefine how it measures “healthy” food as it sets new rules governing the claims manufacturers make on product labels, a nonprofit research group asserts.

The Heartland Health Research Alliance (HHRA), an organization that studies the health effects of food and farming, recently submitted comments to the FDA calling on the agency to adopt a metric HHRA has developed that conveys a food’s healthiness in a single, color-coded number. This metric, called “NuCal,” aims to capture the relationship between a food’s essential nutrients and its caloric content, according to HHRA.

“There are a lot of people whose daily diet is grossly deficient in multiple essential nutrients despite the fact that they think they’re buying perfectly healthy food because a lot of it’s packaged as healthy for you,” said Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist and policy expert who serves as executive director of HHRA. Benbrook said NuCal could help consumers make purchasing choices that lower their risk for obesity, diabetes, and other diseases.

The scoring system focuses on the essential nutrition value found in individual foods rather than food groups.

“What we wanted to do was to try to lay out… a system that has a much greater chance of delivering to consumers [a clear and compelling] message about what’s healthier and what’s not,” he said.

The HHRA proposal comes in response to a plan by the FDA to revise the rules that define food products that can be labeled as “healthy.” Products labeled “healthy” would need to meet certain food group benchmarks recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Food products would also need to follow limits for saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

If the FDA’s proposed definition is adopted, water, avocados, nuts and seeds, certain oils, and fatty fish such as salmon would qualify for labels bearing the “healthy” claim. White bread and highly sweetened yogurts and cereals, which qualify as “healthy” now, no longer would.

The FDA says it will thoroughly review comments before announcing a finalized definition.