Will this be the end of John’s Amazing Dog Treat?
A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive.
The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey, said John Vazzana, president and chief executive officer of manufacturer Intralytix Inc.
The viruses are grown in a preparation of the very bacteria they kill, and then purified. The FDA had concerns that the virus preparation potentially could contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. However, testing did not reveal the presence of such residues, which in small quantities likely wouldn’t cause health problems anyway, the FDA said.
“The FDA is applying one of the toughest food-safety standards which they have to find this is safe,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. “They couldn’t approve this product if they had questions about its safety.”
Intralytix also plans to seek FDA approval for another bacteriophage product to kill E. coli bacteria on beef before it is ground, Vazzana said.
Living next to a city that has every flavor of Luddite ever conceived, I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this being imminent. While I’m never automatically convinced of product safety just because the FDA says so — I don’t doubt they were aware of everyone looking over their shoulder on this one.
Should be interesting.
Of course, the cynic lurking in my cerebral cortex says, “Now, every sleazy retailer of mystery meat will try to push expiration dates out to the next century!”
Update – Response to this topic here and elsewhere is growing exponentially. I’ll provide more links to the discussion:
Phage History at Intralytix website
Evergreen State College is a leading study site in the US
The George Eliava Institute in the nation of Georgia is connected with Intralytix, structurally through individual researchers and also as a provider of research [and production?] material.
Center for Science in the Public Interest
I think I see the Virgin Mary in that pic!! Do you think JCD will sell it to me for $100, or is he going to be selfish and put it up for auction on Ebay for a higher price?
Please God, don’t allow that the dog has eaten it.
all you have to is look into monsanto (at the time it was searl foods) and aspertaine. Anyone who drinks a diet drink is ingesting formaldhyde, caused by the breakup of methel alchol. thanks but no thanks, the FDA isn’t doing it’s job and hasn’t been since it’s inception. They are controlled by corporate intrestest. All you have to do is look at how many people were higher ups at the FDA then went to work at monsanto or the government and back and forth and back and forth ect. GMO crops and patenting of life are going to be the big suprises in the next 10 to 15 years or sooner. The URL i give is a clearing house of info on apertaine and the FDA and CDC. i would take a gander and decide for yourself
oops, i put in the wrong URL sorry about that. The URL is
HTTP:\www.dorway.org\
or just click on my name
#3: In Europe they still don’t have no-scald shower valves or grounded outlets, yet they still seem to survive and aren’t that motivated to change
In fact we have both in (as far as I know) most EU countries, if by no-scald shower valves you mean those thermostatic ones (which you can override if you really want a good scalding) – they’re not compulsory but you can buy them at any hardware store if you really want them. And at least here (Spain) all electrical outlets are either earthed or have quick-acting circuit breakers (safer than fuses). What we don’t have is additive-crammed, poorly inspected American “meat”!
For some reason, we HAVE to make up reasons to protect each other.
Even if its NOT needed…OR we made a mistake int eh firt place doing something ELSE.
Look at all the water in hot dogs, and the Lose of flavor.
Look at Beef…Do you KNOW what color Blood is supposed to be???
they replace it with an Equal amount of water for Loss during handling…
Blood is DARK red, almost Burgandy to Black.
IT AINT RED, and it REALLY ISNT PINK….
Red shows its about 1/2 water added…PINK you dont WANT TO SEE…
But, its the Water that ROTS in the meat.. The Blood is used to soften it, for GREAT taste…Yes we ARE Vampires..
#22: Thanks for the google tip. I did look it up and was apalled. I myself dont drink diet but its more because I can taste the artificial sweetener no matter what kind it is. Its amazing USA must be the only country with both high rates of obecity and anorexia/bulemia. We go to such lengths as to poison ourselvs for the sake of weight.