Business

(NEW YORK) — Even near some of the busiest cities in the United States, nearly 54 million people have a tough time accessing fresh and healthy food, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

One company based in a Denver suburb said they have a solution.

Farmbox Foods in Sedalia, Colorado, turns upcycled shipping containers into vertical hydroponic farms. The company claims the containers can create as much as two football fields worth of traditional agriculture. They grow more than 400-lbs of mushrooms a week.

Rusty Walker, the CEO of Farmbox Foods, called his container boxes “modern farming spaceships.”

“This is a 40 foot high cubed, insulated container that has been repurposed and then engineered to [with] three grow walls,” Walker told ABC News’ Ginger Zee. “[We can grow] right around two and a half acres to three acres of farmland in this container.”

The United States Department of Agriculture defines “food deserts” as areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food. There are approximately 6,500 food deserts in the United States based on 2002 and 2006 census data on locations of supermarkets, supercents and large grocery stores.

Often areas with a higher percentage of poverty and minority population are more likely to be food deserts, the USDA found in a 2012 study.

Walker said his moveable, temperature-controlled, farmland can be shipped and used anywhere.

“So we can be sitting or standing in this container here today and have a truck show up tomorrow and we can put it on a flatbed truck and ship it to Chicago in 48 hours later. Plug it in and it’s growing,” said Walker.

In the United States, more than 40% of the country’s freshwater is used to irrigate crops. Agriculture alone makes up at least 11% of the greenhouse gas emission in the United States, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Walker said that his system of farming only uses the freshwater equivalent of about two loads of laundry a day.

“I think the biggest thing that we have going for us is we use 3 to 5 gallons of water a day. That’s it,” said Walker. “We find that our plants are growing 3 to 4 times faster than they would in an ordinary environment. So we like to say we’re farming without harming.”

Michael Boardman is a natural grocer in Lakewood, Colorado. His grocery store uses a Farmbox Foods container and he said it gives them control over their produce supply chain.

“We’ll be harvesting, taking it directly into our store [and it’s ready] for our customers,” said Boardman, who added that the produce is fresher than traditional grocery supply chains. “[The produce is] much more nutrient dense because it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. It hasn’t been shipped across the country.”

Local grocers are not the only ones who have bought into Farmbox Foods. One of the company’s biggest clients is Centura Health, a local hospital system in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Patrick Gaughan, the senior vice president and chief values integration officer at Centura Health, said they’re growing fresh produce for their patients, associates and community members who come to the hospital.

“As we grow and develop in the foods [we grow], then we’re also giving this food to the communities through local food banks, farmer’s markets, so that people can get access and the food will be available for them,” said Gaughan.

Vertical farming, like Farmbox Foods, is often criticized due to the limited amount of foods that can be produced. But Farmbox Foods told ABC News that they are expanding quickly and have been testing carrots, potatoes and radishes.

Gaughan said the ready access to fresh food will only make a stronger and healthier community — all year round.

“We can tie food insecurity and poor nutrition to things like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, even mental health,” he said. “We can introduce people to a whole different way of getting their food, tasting their food, using their food in a culturally respective way, but also in a way that’s affordable and available year round.”

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(NEW YORK) — Are you looking for ways to take control of your budget or save for the future?

According to a viral hashtag with more than 376 million views on TikTok, you can accomplish both and all you need is some old-fashioned cash and a set of envelopes.

TikTokers swear by the concept of cash stuffing. It’s a technology-free way to budget and plan out your finances that’s similar to the “developing” method.

How to cash stuff

You can start by dividing up your set of envelopes into categories and labeling them. For example, date night, bills, utilities, etc.

From there, you then divide up your hard-earned cash into the respective category or envelope it will be allotted to.

“I swiped my card way too much,” TikTok cash stuffer Stephanie Garcia told ABC News’ Good Morning America.

Since she began stuffing, Garcia said she managed to keep her debt low and also saved over $10,000 for the future.

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(NEW YORK) — A Wisconsin family is suing TikTok after their 9-year-old daughter died attempting the so-called “blackout challenge” popularized on social media.

Arriani Jaileen Arroyo died by asphyxiation on Feb. 26, 2021. Now, her family, along with the parents of 8-year-old Lalani Walton of Texas, who also died of asphyxiation by strangulation on July 15, 2021, have come together with the Social Media Victims Law Center to file a lawsuit against TikTok on behalf of their daughters.

“This is not easy, to wake up every day and know that your little girl is never coming back,” Arriani’s mother Christal Arroyo Roman told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Saturday.  “You’re never gonna hear her voice, you’re never gonna see her smile or hear her say ‘I love you.'”

Arriani was everything to her family. Her mother said she was an intelligent and stylish little diva who loved doing nails, dancing, and would give the coat off her back to those she loved. Like many children across the country, she also enjoyed following social media trends, including food challenges and learning new dances.

“We just never thought that there was a darker side to what TikTok allows on its platform,” Roman said.

In the wake of the two girls’ deaths, the Arroyos and Walton’s family are calling on TikTok for answers. The Arroyos told ABC News the families are speaking out in hopes of preventing other children from falling victim to the same crushing fates as their daughters.

“We just want people to be aware, because we don’t want no other children out there to be a statistic of this situation again,” Arriani’s father Heriberto Arroyo Roman said. “We want to make sure that we can save other kids.”

According to the June 30 lawsuit filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of the families, multiple children from different states and countries died last year by asphyxiation after attempting the same “blackout challenge” — in which children choke themselves until they pass out — allegedly suggested to them on their TikTok “For You” pages.

The lawsuit specifically claims that “at all times relevant, TikTok’s algorithm was designed to promote ‘TikTok Challenges’ to young users to increase their engagement and maximize TikTok’s profits.”

It also claims the company was aware that some of the challenges allegedly being promoted to young people could be deadly, but that it did not act to correct the problem.

“TikTok outrageously took no and/or completely inadequate action to extinguish and prevent the spread of the Blackout Challenge and specifically to prevent its algorithm from directing children to the Blackout Challenge, despite notice and/or foreseeability that such a failure would inevitably lead to more injuries and deaths, including those of children,” the lawsuit reads.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, different versions of the challenge — sometimes referred to as the “choking game” — have existed for years and predate social media. But the lawsuit claims TikTok’s endless timeline algorithm has exposed children to those trends with deadly results.

Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and the lead attorney on the case, told ABC News that the lawsuit is focused on TikTok’s concerns for profitability, allegedly without regard for the harmful effects its engineering may have on the platform’s youngest users.

“This is a case about saving kids,” Bergman said. “Let’s be clear, children are sent to these challenges by the TikTok algorithms. This is not an accident and it’s not a coincidence.”

Bergman and the Arroyo family claim tragic events like Arriani’s and Lalani’s deaths were predictable and preventable by TikTok, which they claim promotes “engineered addiction,” according to the lawsuit complaint.

“Engineered addiction,” as defined by the lawsuit, is a familiar feature across many popular social media platforms and includes “bottomless scrolling, tagging, notifications, and live stories.”

“TikTok engineers its social media product to keep users, and particularly young users, engaged longer and coming back for more,” the complaint alleges.

Reached for comment, a TikTok spokesperson pointed ABC News to a statement the company released last year about the challenge but did not address allegations that the platform algorithms directed children to dangerous content.

“This disturbing ‘challenge,’ which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend. We remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss,” the previous statement read.

Currently, searching the “blackout challenge” hashtag on TikTok redirects users to the application’s community guidelines, which is typically done when certain hashtags are related to harmful activities.

Experts warn of danger of gamification of disturbing trends online

Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist from the Child Mind Institute, warned parents about risks to talk about with young kids who are on social media.

“If you see something online and you see people framing it as fun or a challenge or something interesting, you’re sort of gamifying the particular thing and decreasing people’s perception of the risks,” Anderson said, speaking with GMA on Saturday. “So calling it a ‘blackout’ challenge is branding.”

Linda Charmaraman, Ph. D., a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Lab, specializes in the research of early childhood adolescence and said monitoring is not enough because even the most “carefully watching parent” can miss a crucial moment in which a young child may be influenced to harm themselves by social media.

“[Children] have this trust that nothing bad’s gonna happen to them,” Charmaraman told ABC News. “And they don’t think as carefully as somebody who’s two years older or four years older, that there could be consequences not just on their physical health but their mental health, on their spiritual health.”

Charmaraman suggested parents “keep having dialogues and enlist their village” to engage in conversations with children about the content they consume on social media platforms to help keep them safe.

“It’s not a one big talk kind of situation,” Charmaraman said. “It’s an ongoing kind of exploration and partnership.”

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(NEW YORK) — Trader Joe’s announced this week that it is recalling its popular soft-baked snickerdoodle cookies, citing possible plastic contamination.

“We have been alerted by our supplier of Trader Joe’s Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles (SKU# 94075, BB (Best By) Date 02/03/2023) that product with the aforementioned Best By Date may contain hard plastic pieces,” the retailer said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.

According to the store, there have been no injuries reported so far, and all of the potentially affected product was removed from sale.

“If you purchased any Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles, please do not eat them. We urge you to discard the product or return it to any Trader Joe’s for a full refund,” the company added. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”

Questions may be directed to Trader Joe’s Customer Relations by phone at(626) 599-3817, Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Customers can also send an email using the form on the Trader Joe’s website.

As Mashed reported on Thursday, the snickerdoodles are made by the manufacturer Enjoy Life Natural Brands and sold under the Trader Joe’s label.

Enjoy Life issued a separate voluntary recall on June 30 for “a limited quantity of a select list of baked snacks products due to the potential presence of hard plastic pieces.”

Those items include the company’s Soft Baked Snickerdoodle, Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Brownie, Sunseed Butter Chocolate Chip and Monster Cookies. The company’s Sunseed Crunch and Caramel Blondie Chewy Bars were recalled as well, along with the brand’s Rich Chocolate and Salted Caramel Life Brownie Bites.

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Fruit & Oat Breakfast Ovals in flavors Apple Cinnamon, Chocolate Chip Banana and Berry Medley were affected by the recall, as were the company’s Soft Baked Cookies – Amazon Variety Packs.

Full product codes, photos and “Best By” dates for the recalled Enjoy Life products can be found on the Food and Drug Administration’s website.

“There have been no reports of injury or illness received by Enjoy Life Foods to date related to these products,” the company said in a press release. “Consumers who have this product should not eat it and should discard any product they may have but should keep any available packaging and contact the company at 1 (855) 543-5335, 24 hours a day to get more information about the recall and how to receive a refund.”

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(NEW YORK) — It’s 2022, and Victoria’s Secret is coming in hot with its first fine fragrance in five years.

“Bare,” the brand’s latest scent, launched this week. According to the company, “Bare” celebrates individuality and self-expression.

“This soft, warm scent transforms on skin, creating a signature that’s uniquely yours,” the company captioned the video revealing the launch.

“Bare Eau de Parfum” includes an alluring blend of musky mandarin, floral Egyptian violet petals and warm Australian sandalwood. Victoria’s Secret says the fragrance was formulated to adapt to every person’s body chemistry to create a unique scent for anyone who wears it.

The packaging for the latest fragrance is created with upcycled materials and responsibly sourced ingredients. Additionally, it uses a new cryptosym technology — created and trademarked by Symrise, a German chemicals company based in Holzminden — which has the capability to encrypt scent formulations to preserve its novelty and protect it from future replication.

“Bare Eau de Parfum is our most intimate fragrance yet. It’s about a quiet confidence that comes from knowing your authentic self, and celebrates individuality in its most natural form,” Kristen Lagoa, Victoria’s Secret vice president of merchandising, beauty and accessories, said in a statement.

The ad campaign for the new fragrance features a diverse lineup of women, ranging from social advocates and herbalists to artists and creatives — all with different backgrounds and body types.

Throughout the imagery, models are seen alongside inspiring quotes such as “Comparison is the thief of joy” and “It’s really the simple things that hold the most space for our healing.”

The latest campaign marks a major transformation from Victoria’s Secret’s past branding. In 2018, the company faced criticism after Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer for L Brands — Victoria’s Secret’s parent company — told Vogue he didn’t think the brand should add plus-size or transgender models to its annual fashion show “because the show is a fantasy.”

Razek later apologized for his comments and resigned from the company.

The brand ultimately said farewell to its famed “Angel” models last year and launched The VS Collective to revamp its image, featuring a diverse lineup of “ambassadors,” including Valentina Sampaio, who is transgender, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and LGBTQIA+ activist and professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, along with several others.

“Bare” is available nationwide now online and in-stores. It’s also slated to launch worldwide starting Aug. 23.

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(NEW YORK) — As prices for goods are on the rise, there has been a debate over how much control consumers have at the cash register.

Some economists, like Rakeen Mabud of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank, say there isn’t much attention being paid to companies that are charging these prices.

Mabud spoke with ABC News’ “START HERE” to discuss the role of corporations during the current economic climate.

START HERE: I think the usual way this economic story is being told is that the economy is, you know, it’s worse for everyone. Everyone’s taking a hit, but you’ve said that’s not necessarily the case. Why is that?

MABUD: If you look at the data, we see that corporate profits are at 70-year record highs. So even as consumers are struggling to send their kids to school and put gas in the tank and put food on the table, there are some people who are making a lot of money off this crisis.

Essentially what’s going on is that big corporations are using the cover of inflation to jack up their prices beyond what their input costs would justify and rake in those profits, and consumers are paying the price. Some of the most egregious examples are credit card companies. Visa and MasterCard, for example, are a massive duopoly in their space, and so they have a huge amount of market share. And what we saw is that these companies make money by taking a fixed percentage cut of each transaction. So with inflation, as prices are rising, they’re inherently going to be pulling in more money, and yet these companies are also increasing that transaction fee.

If you’re going from 10% of the price of an apple to 15% of a price of an apple, you’re going to be making more money. And critically I think a lot of companies have been blaming supply chain issues. Visa and MasterCard don’t have that excuse. There are no supply chain issues to be seen here. It is just straight-up corporate profiteering.

START HERE: But if people were being charged super unfairly for certain, like kind of expendable, not necessity items, when do they stop spending the money? Isn’t the issue is people have more money to spend? You’ve heard conservative economists say, “Well, duh, we sent out large stimulus checks to people for simply living through a pandemic.” Wages have been going up. And so, when stuff gets more expensive, people are still paying it. We haven’t seen in the data a lot of reticence from people to completely shift their spending habits simply because of inflation. So isn’t the issue yeah, people have more money, they should spend more money. They’ve got it.

MABUD: Yeah. There’s a lot of research and evidence to suggest that two things are not driving up prices. Increase worker wages and money in people’s pockets. I think the critical thing to remember here is we are coming out of a wild time in our economy. We just went through a pandemic, [an] unprecedented sort of economic forces and disruptions. At Groundwork Collaborative, where I work, we often like to say we are the economy. It’s this idea that when all of us do well, that’s when the economy does well.

And that’s really what these stimulus payments and our attention to workers and families throughout this crisis have gotten us. It’s gotten us a recovery that’s been pretty healthy. I think the other thing to remember here is that corporations are making a lot of money and they also have a lot more information about where price increases are coming from. So if you think about it, if you’re a CEO, you have a good sense of how much of the price increase that you’re passing off to a consumer is because of actual input costs going up. Some, something that you use in their manufacturing process.

START HERE: Like supply chain issues like that. That creates a real need to raise costs, perhaps.

MABUD: Absolutely. For example. If you’re a bicycle producer and the cost of steel goes up, the price of that bike is going to go up a little bit. And, as a CEO, you can also gild the lily a little bit more. Take another spoonful of sugar and the consumer has no idea. So I think we really see executives exploiting that information asymmetry.

And the key thing here is that we have listened to hundreds and hundreds of earnings calls. These are the calls where CEOs and business executives are telling their investors what happened last quarter and what to expect in the coming quarters. And they’re saying the quiet part out loud. So when it comes down to it, I think the easiest way to understand what’s going on here is to follow the money. What we see is consumers are paying more and more out of their own pockets and shareholders are getting richer and corporate profits are increasing.

We have dozens of quotes from CEOs on these earnings calls that essentially say, “Hey, is the great strategy for us to be raising prices on consumers right now?” And so just by way of example, the CEO of 3M, which makes masks and medical equipment, bragged on the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call that the team, “Did an amazing job driving higher prices,” which have, “more than offset the amount of inflation.”

3M also said that they’re already working on higher prices to expand its profit margins even further. The CEO of Constellation Brands, which produces Modelo and Corona, has said on an earnings call, that we want to take as much as we can when it comes to pricing.

These CEOs are not shy about what they’re doing and it’s borne out in the data. So recent research shows that corporate profit comprises most of the inflation that we’re seeing in price hikes that we’re seeing. I think that’s probably changing a little bit, but it’s undeniably true that this is outside of historical norms.

START HERE: But what do you do to combat any of these issues? Because you’ve been on record saying the Fed has been raising interest rates to try to get inflation under control. You’ve said they shouldn’t do that. Continuing to raise interest rates will actually hurt regular people more as they try to live their lives. So what are the other options? Is it like you just ask these companies to volunteer to charge last year? Do you want to have laws that dictate how companies can make and spend their money? What do you do?

MABUD: The way to address the current price hikes is not to make people poorer and to take away their jobs. Because when we talk about the Fed raising interest rates, what we’re talking about is them jacking up unemployment.

The way to address the supply side issues that we’re facing is really to expand our toolbox, and that means making big investments and functional supply chains. It means tackling pandemic profiteering when we see it happen. Three-quarters of states have a price gouging law. We could do that at the federal level. It means taxing companies, [and] decreasing the incentives to jack up profits to sky-high astronomical levels.

There are a lot of tools in our toolbox. And I think once we start to really unpack where some of these current price hikes are coming from, those tools become a lot more available to us.

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(PHILADELPHIA) — The legal team representing the family of two young Black girls who were seemingly waved off by a Sesame Place character is calling for the costumed performer to be fired.

“We want a genuine and authentic apology,” attorney B’Ivory LaMarr said in a press conference Wednesday. “The second thing that we’re requesting is for the immediate termination of that performer. The third thing that we’re going to request is — we’re going to demand that they take care of any type of health care or mental care expenses that these children have realized.”

In a video posted on Twitter, two young Black girls at Sesame Place Philadelphia waved excitedly and held out their arms as a performer dressed in a Rosita costume approached.

Rosita high-fives parkgoers as she walks down the line, before appearing to shake her head at and wave off the two girls as she walks away from them.

“#BabyPaige & her cute lil friends went to @SesamePlace this weekend to celebrate Paige’s 4th birthday & this is how #SesamePlace treated these beautiful Black children,” the tweet, posted by the apparent aunt of the girl celebrating her birthday, read.

Outrage ensued online, as more footage of similar incidents with park characters and Black children were posted online in response to the viral video. Calls to boycott Sesame Place are growing on social media.

“While we hate to speculate and consider ‘race’ as the motivating factor, which would explain the performer’s actions, such actions both before and after the young girls reached out only leads us to one conclusion,” said LaMarr, who is representing the family, in a statement to ABC News.

He continued, “Although Sesame Place purports to stand for inclusivity and equality, this was not demonstrated this past Saturday. We are currently investigating this incident and will exercise every legal remedy possible to further protect this family.”

In the park’s initial statement, the performer portraying Rosita is said to have intended the “no” hand gesture in response to requests to hold children for a photo and did not intentionally ignore the girls.

The park said it has apologized to the family directly and has invited them for a meet-and-greet with the characters. It has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment on the family’s employee termination demands.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs Sesame Street, said it will “conduct bias training and a thorough review of the ways in which they engage families and guests” at Sesame Place after a video of a potential racial bias incident went viral online.

“As a global nonprofit educational organization with a mission to help children grow smarter, stronger and kinder, Sesame Workshop has always stood for respect, inclusion and belonging and is committed to providing the highest quality engaging experiences for all children and families,” the organization said in a statement.

In an interview with ABC News, the mother of the birthday girl Jodi Brown said she’s happy the video went viral.

“These are innocent children. And the job of the character is to bring joy to the kids,” she said. “I also think that a lot of parents, as you can see in the other videos that are now released, have went through a similar thing and just didn’t speak up about it right away. So now they have the courage to say ‘hey, this also happened to my child.'”

Sesame Place Philadelphia released a second statement on the incident, saying, “We know that it’s not OK. We are taking actions to do better. We are committed to making this right.”

The park said it will conduct training for employees to deliver an “inclusive, equitable and entertaining” experience for parkgoers.

Sesame Place is a licensed park partner of Sesame Workshop.

ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — More than half of the guns seized on the streets of a dozen American cities after being used in crimes were made by five manufacturers, according to data released Wednesday by the mayors of those cities.

The group is gathered in New York for a summit on preventing gun violence.
The top manufacturer of recovered guns is Glock in nine of the 12 cities. On average, more than one and a half times more Glocks were recovered than the second-leading manufacturer in each of those nine cities.

Five gun manufacturers accounted for over half of the guns recovered: Glock (16.6%), Taurus (12.4%), Smith & Wesson (11.8%), Ruger (6.5%) and Polymer80 (3.8%). These five manufacturers accounted for nearly 10,000 guns recovered in crimes in 2021.

“We’re dealing with the same problem: a $9 billion industry turning their profits into our pain,” New York Mayor Eric Adams told ABC News in an appearance on Good Morning America with the mayors of Buffalo, New York; Little Rock, Arkansas; and St. Louis.

“Over 110 people are killed by guns every day in our country,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said. “Something has to be done.”

The mayors have convened to discuss strategies to combat gun violence and “to get that gun before it hits our streets,” Adams said.

Putting a focus on the manufacturers is deliberate, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said.

“If this were any other industry that was as deadly then the government would have already acted to make sure that we got rid of whatever was killing our citizens,” Jones said. “We haven’t seen that action from the federal government so we have to look at the root causes and try to cure gun violence in our cities.”

Absent additional federal action, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said it is left to local leaders to solve the problem.

“Any of us at any point in time will receive a phone call about a homicide and 99.9% of the time it relates to a gun,” Scott said. “We have to address the guns.”

ABC News’ Max Zahn contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The national average price for a gallon of gas fell below $4.50 on Tuesday for the first time since the middle of May, according to AAA data. The price crossed the milestone amid a sustained fall in gas prices over the past month, owing in part to a decline in global demand.

The national average price for a gallon of gas, which stands at $4.49, has fallen more than 10% since it reached a peak of $5.01 last month, according to data AAA provided to ABC News.

In California, the state with the highest average price, a gallon of gas costs $5.87, though that price has fallen more than 8% over the past month. In South Carolina, the state with the lowest average gas price, a gallon costs $3.99, AAA data showed.

Sky-high prices in the summer stemmed from a travel boom that brought more people to the pump, experts told ABC News in late May.

That spike in demand coincided with a shortage of crude oil supply amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a widespread industry exit from Russia that pushed millions of barrels of oil off the market, the experts said.

In March, the U.S. and its allies announced the collective release of 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves over the following months, which sought to alleviate some of the supply shortage and blunt price increases.

The fall in gas prices marks good news for federal policymakers, who have sought to dial back prices while averting a recession.

But the milestone for falling gas prices follows an overall spike in the price of goods last month. The consumer price index, or CPI, stood at 9.1% in June, a significant increase from 8.6% in May, according to a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Wednesday. That is the largest 12-month increase since December 1981.

“Tackling inflation is my top priority,” President Joe Biden said last Wednesday after the data was released. “We need to make more progress, more quickly, in getting price increases under control.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has axed a program that allowed the public to view COVID-19 levels on cruise ships that sail in U.S. waters.

The CDC announced Monday it would do away with the program, saying it “determined that the cruise industry has access to the necessary tools (e.g., cruise-specific recommendations and guidance, vaccinations, testing instruments, treatment modalities and non-pharmaceutical interventions) to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 on board.”

The move comes as the BA.5 omicron subvariant spreads across the United States. The variant is now estimated to make up more than 78% of new cases, according to the CDC.

The pandemic-era policy designated ships with a color-coding system based on testing and vaccination rates, allowing the public to monitor the spread of the virus on ships. The CDC said the system was removed because it “depended upon each cruise line having the same COVID-19 screening testing standards, which may now vary among cruise lines.”

The CDC said it will continue to publish guidance for cruise ships to mitigate and manage COVID-19 transmission. It also said each cruise will “determine their own specific COVID-19 related requirements for cruise travel, as well as safety measures and protocols for passengers traveling on board.”

“It’s still too early to tell exactly what it means for cruisers, as the cruise lines now need to figure out what their guidelines will be,” Chris Gray Faust, managing editor of the Cruise Critic, told ABC News. “The CDC’s previous order did cover a wide variety of requirements, including pre-cruise testing, vaccine requirements, masking guidelines and quarantine requirements. Now that this is all back at the cruise line level.”

Currently, coronavirus protocols vary among cruise lines and also depend on local mandates where ships sail.

Royal Caribbean requires all passengers 12 and older to present proof of full COVID-19 vaccination with the final dose administered at least 14 days before sailing.

Carnival Cruise Line offers vaccinated cruises, allowing guests who have received their final dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine at least 14 days prior to the sailing day (not counting embarkation day) and have proof of vaccination. Carnival does provide some exceptions for unvaccinated guests ages 5 and older, requiring those passengers to present a negative PCR COVID-19 test, taken within 72 and 24 hours prior to the sailing date at check-in.

Norwegian Cruise Line requires all guests age 12 and over to be fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to departure in order to board.

If passengers want to find out about outbreaks on ships, the CDC advises they reach out to the cruise line directly.

“It’s really important to stay up to date on what your cruise line requires. Read those emails that the cruise lines send you because things could be changing. If you have a travel agent, check in with them,” Faust said.

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