(NEW YORK) — The seal of approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on meat and poultry you see at the grocery store may soon carry more weight thanks to an update to labeling guidelines for meat producers that will more rigorously verify how animals were raised.
The government agency announced a new multi-step effort on Wednesday for the first time since 2019 in which the Food Safety and Inspection Service will raise the bar on its requirements for producers’ claims about how animals were raised.
Terms that appear on labels such as “grass-fed” and “free-range,” which are voluntary marketing claims, must now be approved by the Food Safety and Inspection Service before being put on a label.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said consumers should be able to trust what they infer when picking a product with a USDA mark of inspection.
He added that the USDA is taking the new steps “to ensure the integrity of animal-raising claims and level the playing field for producers who are truthfully using these claims, which we know consumers value and rely on to guide their meat and poultry purchasing decisions.”
The agency said in a press release that it has “received several petitions, comments, and letters from a wide range of stakeholders asking the agency to reevaluate its oversight of animal-raising claims, specifically, how they are substantiated.” That also applies to the accuracy of “‘negative’ antibiotics claims” such as “raised without antibiotics” or “no antibiotics ever.”
In partnership with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, the Food Safety and Inspection Service will start “a sampling project to assess antibiotic residues in cattle destined for the ‘raised without antibiotics’ market,” to help inform whether FSIS should require that laboratory testing results be submitted for that claim or start a new verification sampling program.
The FSIS will also issue a new industry guideline for companies to strengthen any documentation they submit to the agency to further substantiate those animal-raising claims.
The agency said it also plans to “strongly encourage use of third-party certification to verify these claims.”
This action comes on the heels of other efforts from the USDA to protect consumers from false or misleading labels as part of President Joe Biden’s executive order on promoting competition in the American economy.
Apple TV+ announced on Friday that the sci-fi thriller series, Silo, currently in its first season, has already gotten the go-ahead for a season 2. Silo, per the streamer, follows “the last ten thousand people on earth, their mile-deep home protecting them from the toxic and deadly world outside. However, no one knows when or why the silo was built and any who try to find out face fatal consequences.” Rebecca Ferguson executive produces and stars in the series, along with Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, David Oyelowo, Rashida Jones and Tim Robbins. Silo‘s eighth episode of launches Friday, June 16 on Apple TV+…
Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett are teaming up for the film Is This Thing On?, in which both are set to co-star and Cooper to direct, according to Deadline. The film is still in the early stages, with Arnett and Mark Chappell, turning in a rough draft of the script before the writers strike. Cooper’s also expected to pitch in as soon as the strike ends…
Hulu’s Reservation Dogs is coming to FX, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Season 1 of the comedy series will air two episodes Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT for four weeks starting June 26 and finishing a couple of weeks ahead of the show’s August 2 third season premiere on Hulu. The series, which stars D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Paulina Alexis and Lane Factor, follows four Native American teenagers growing up on a reservation…
Deadline reports the CW’s Superman & Lois is returning for a 10-episode fourth season, but seven of its series regulars — including Dylan Walsh, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Erik Valdez, Inde Navarrette, Wolé Parks, Tayler Buck and Sofia Hasmik — won’t be, as a result of budget cuts. The hope, per the outlet, is that they’ll all reprise their roles on a guest star or recurring basis. Returning for season 4 are Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as the titular characters, Michael Bishop and Alex Garfin as their children and Michael Cudlitz as Lex Luthor…
(NEW YORK) — Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced on Thursday morning he is running for president, challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
Suarez told co-anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America he represents “generational change,” but he repeatedly avoided answering about Trump’s indictment or whether he had done anything wrong.
The 45-year-old mayor filed paperwork on Wednesday declaring his candidacy for president, making him the third candidate from Florida to jump into the race and the only Latino GOP candidate in the field.
(NEW YORK) — The indictment of former President Donald Trump on federal charges last week has elicited outcry from many of his prominent supporters in Washington D.C., who have denounced the prosecution as politically motivated or downplayed the alleged crimes.
While many of Trump’s top allies in the business community have largely remained quiet, some of Trump’s supporters in the private sector spoke with ABC News, offering a range of views about the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith and the alleged crimes.
The business allies also weighed in on whether the indictment would affect plans for further donations to the Trump campaign, and explained why they believe many of their peers haven’t spoken out.
Trump faces 37 counts tied to what prosecutors said were the mishandling of classified documents and the obstruction of an investigation into the alleged misconduct. The classified documents at issue, according to the indictment, included information about nuclear programs and potential national security vulnerabilities.
Taken together, the charges could bring decades in prison if found guilty. Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in court. Following the arraignment, the former president criticized Smith and falsely claimed that he was able to keep classified documents under the Presidential Records Act.
John Catsimatidis, a New York-based billionaire who donated at least $600,000 in support of Trump’s 2020 and 2016 presidential campaigns, downplayed Trump’s alleged misconduct but affirmed the legitimacy of the court proceeding.
Speaking about the federal charges against Trump, Catsimatidis belittled the case as “nickel and dime.”
Still, Catsimatidis said he trusts the court system to adjudicate the charges against Trump.
“Let it go through the system,” said Catsimatidis, the owner of the grocery store chain Gristedes.
Stan Pate, whose Alabama-based company BPH Properties made a $500,000 donation in support of Trump in November, forcefully denounced the federal charges against Trump and vowed to bolster his support for Trump’s candidacy if he is found guilty.
The charges amount to a “complete outrage,” said Stephen Moore, who served as an economic adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
However, Moore said that he is “not a lawyer.”
“No one is above the law,” added Moore, a fellow in economics at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. “I can’t assess whether he violated this law or that law.”
As with some prominent Republican elected officials, Catsimatidis and Pate said the indictment was political.
There is no evidence that Biden influenced the decision to charge Trump. For his part, Smith was a federal prosecutor for nearly 10 years, and oversaw the DOJ’s public integrity section, where he investigated members of both parties.
Hours before Trump’s indictment became public, Biden said Americans should trust the Department of Justice, despite attacks from Trump and others.
“I have never once, not one single time suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Biden said.
Catsimatidis and Pate both said the indictment would not affect their decision-making about future donations in support of Trump.
Pate, who was set to attend a meet-and-greet event with Trump at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey on Tuesday night, said he will “certainly be donating to his campaign in the future.”
If Trump is found guilty of federal crimes in the documents case, Pate said he would “double down.”
“If you believe in somebody and have confidence in him, why would you abandon him and take away your support,” Pate added. “I might triple down.”
Catsimatidis, who donated more than $100,000 in support of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said contributions are the “cost of doing business.”
“I donate money because when I pick up the phone and call people, I like them to answer the phone,” Catsimatidis said.
The indictment is unlikely to affect donations from staunch backers of Trump, Candice Nelson, a professor of government at American University and academic director of The Campaign Institute, told ABC News.
“If they’re strong supporters of Trump, they’ll believe what he’s telling them,” Nelson said.
ABC News contacted more than two dozen current and former allies of Trump within the private sector about the indictment, including many who have offered him economic policy advice and donated millions of dollars in support of his presidential campaigns.
Most of the backers declined to comment or did not reply.
When asked why most of Trump’s business allies passed up an opportunity to comment on the indictment, Catsimatidis said: “They’re scared stiff.”
“There are very few people,” he added. “who are willing to stand up and say that it’s right or it’s wrong.”
Most major Trump donors, Moore said, have not spoken publicly about the indictment because they “don’t want to be front and center on this kind of controversy.”
“They want to stay behind the scenes,” Moore added.
(NEW YORK) — A Kentucky mother of three says she was forced to travel out of state for an abortion despite her fetus being diagnosed with a fatal condition.
After Heather Maberry, 32, a substitute teacher from Stanton — about 100 miles southeast of Louisville — and her husband, Nick, got married last year, they were excited to try for a baby and expand their family.
Maberry said she first found out she was pregnant in October 2022, only to eventually miscarry, and then discovered she was pregnant again two days before Christmas last year.
“I’ve always wanted another baby,” she told ABC News. “We were super excited, but we were also very nervous because we had just lost a baby. So, we just kept trying to take care of me the best we could.”
It was a difficult pregnancy for Maberry. She was at first diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, which is a severe type of nausea and vomiting that occurs during pregnancy. She was put on several medications before she began to feel better, medical records viewed by ABC News show.
Maberry and her husband found out they were going to have a girl, who they named Willow. Then came the 20-week ultrasound, during which Maberry’s OBGYN told her the fetus had anencephaly, confirmed in medical records viewed by ABC News.
Anencephaly is a serious birth defect, which occurs when the brain and skull do not fully develop. Babies with the condition are either stillborn or die within a few hours or days of being born.
It is estimated that 1 in about 4,600 babies in the United States are born with anencephaly every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It felt like hell,” Maberry said of hearing the diagnosis. “It just felt like somebody was beating me down. I mean, that was just the worst feeling in the world. The worst news any parent could ever get.”
A second opinion at another hospital confirmed the diagnosis. Maberry was aware of Kentucky’s strict abortion laws that went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. Abortion in Kentucky is almost totally banned with very limited exceptions.
In February 2023, the state’s highest court allowed a separate so-called “heartbeat” law to remain in place, which prevents abortions from occurring after cardiac activity can be detected.
“Generally, the clinical recommendation would be for a patient to decide what they want to do in that scenario, but with the caveat that one outcome is likely going to be a stillbirth or fetal demise,” Dr. Sadia Haider, an OBGYN at Rush University Medical Center who did not treat Maberry, told ABC News. “The patients can choose what they want to do in this scenario, whether they will continue the pregnancy, deliver, and about fetal demise versus choose to terminate…Most places prior to Roe being overturned would have offered those, even in restricted states.”
Haider said it does not matter if there’s a fetal heartbeat or not because the fetus will unfortunately die either during birth or shortly after being born.
“In this scenario, it’s irrelevant whether there’s a heartbeat or not because anencephaly basically means there’s no brain development or no brain, essentially like no neurologic development, which is essential for survival,” she said.
Maberry asked if an abortion could be performed, but her doctor told her he could not perform an abortion for her or induce her because of the law. ABC News reached out to the doctor’s office for a comment on their care for Maberry, but did not hear back.
“The only option I had here was to continue carrying her with the same outcome for another you know, 17, 18 weeks,” she said. “I said, ‘I physically can’t and mentally can’t continue carrying her knowing that she’s never gonna breathe, we’re never going to have a life with her.’ So, we came to the decision that we were going to try to get an abortion.”
Maberry said she called the National Abortion Hotline, which referred her to an abortion clinic in Chicago. Originally, she was quoted $3,300 for the procedure. However, she said the hotline, as well as other abortion funds, helped cover the cost of the procedure.
The funds also helped cover the cost of hotels and food for herself and her husband, Maberry said. Without the help, she estimates they would have needed to pay $6,000 to $7,000 out of pocket.
During the abortion, which was confirmed in medical records viewed by ABC News, Maberry learned that her daughter had other deformities, including missing some of her toes.
Maberry said prior to this experience she didn’t believe in abortion for herself, but didn’t think it meant other people shouldn’t be able to have the procedure.
She said she is not mad at her doctor, but she is angry at the law and the legislators in Kentucky who supported the bill that led to her being required to leave her state to receive care.
“I mean most of them are men,” she said. “They are never going to have to carry a child. They’re never going to have to be in the position, they’re never gonna be the one that was carrying that baby and had to go through hell.”
Kentucky lawmakers who have supported the bans have called abortion “a stain on our country” and have said abortion is against their religious beliefs.
Haider said not offering abortion services in several states is putting a significant burden on patients, especially for those who receive those fatal diagnoses.
“There’s so much involved in choosing to continue with pregnancy, choosing to go through the delivery as far as like physically, emotionally and otherwise,” she said. “And allowing patients to have a choice in how long they have to continue this for — given the negative outcome that they’re gonna face — is really important.”
(ROME) — The Vatican press office released photos on Thursday of Pope Francis recovering after undergoing intestinal surgery.
Francis was checked into Gemelli hospital in Rome Wednesday, June 7, for a three-hour intestinal operation.
The 86-year-old pontiff will be discharged on Friday morning, Matteo Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said Thursday.
Photos taken and released on Thursday show the pontiff’s visit to “to the Pediatric Oncology and Children’s Neurosurgery Department on the 10th floor of Gemelli, adjacent to the apartment where he is convalescing,” the Vatican said.
The pope went to Gemelli hospital in Rome to undergo “a Laparotomy and abdominal wall plastic surgery with prosthesis under general anaesthesia,” Matte Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said in a statement last week.
The Vatican has said in the days since that the surgery went well and the pope has been recovering.
“Pope Francis continued his convalescence this afternoon, working with rest and recovery intervals,” the Vatican said on Wednesday.
(ROME) — The Vatican press office released photos on Thursday of Pope Francis recovering after undergoing surgery last week.
Francis was checked into Gemelli hospital in Rome last Wednesday for a three-hour intestinal operation. He’s been recovering at the hospital since then.
Photos taken and released on Thursday show the pontiff’s visit to “to the Pediatric Oncology and Children’s Neurosurgery Department on the 10th floor of Gemelli, adjacent to the apartment where he is convalescing,” the Vatican said.
The pope went to Gemelli hospital in Rome to undergo “a Laparotomy and abdominal wall plastic surgery with prosthesis under general anaesthesia,” Matte Bruni, director of the press office for The Holy See, said in a statement last week.
The Vatican has said in the days since that the surgery went well and the pope has been recovering.
“Pope Francis continued his convalescence this afternoon, working with rest and recovery intervals,” the Vatican said on Wednesday.
(LONDON) — Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson “deliberately misled” Parliament about rule-breaking parties during the COVID-19 pandemic, a committee of lawmakers said in a scathing report on Thursday.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced late Wednesday that the state’s highway patrol has seized enough fentanyl in San Francisco in the past six weeks to kill the city’s entire population nearly three times over.
Since the governor launched a public safety partnership between the city and state on May 1, the California Highway Patrol has seized more than 4.2 kilograms of fentanyl in the Tenderloin neighborhood and the immediate surrounding area of San Francisco. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers a lethal dose of fentanyl to be 2 milligrams. One kilogram has the potential to kill 500,000 people, and the amount seized in San Francisco is enough to potentially kill 2.1 million people, according to a press release from Newsom’s office.
Furthermore, in the first six weeks of the operation, the California Highway Patrol also seized more than 957 grams of methamphetamine, 319 grams of cocaine and 31 grams of heroin. The agency also made 92 felony and misdemeanor arrests, including on charges related to possession of fentanyl, illegal firearm possession, driving under the influence and domestic violence.
The joint public safety operation in San Francisco has brought together multiple agencies to tackle the fentanyl and opioid crisis, including the California Highway Patrol, the California National Guard, the California Department of Justice, the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. The effort is focused on “targeting fentanyl trafficking, disrupting the supply of the deadly drug in the city, and holding the operators of drug trafficking rings accountable,” according to Newsom’s office.
The governor previously said that the operation will not result in criminalizing those addicted to drugs.
“I’m proud of the CHP and CalGuard’s lifesaving efforts to shut down the Tenderloin’s poison pipeline and hold drug traffickers accountable,” Newsom said in a statement on Wednesday night. “These early results show promise and serve as a call to action: we must do more to clean up San Francisco’s streets, help those struggling with substance use and eradicate fentanyl from our neighborhoods.”
Prior to becoming California’s governor in 2019, Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. The city’s Tenderloin neighborhood is rife with open-air drug use and dealing.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat severe pain, is the leading driver of drug overdose deaths in the United States, as well as in San Francisco. Although the number of accidental overdose deaths recorded in the city have declined in recent years, they remain high. Of the 620 deaths in 2022, 72% were attributed to fentanyl, according to data released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
(WASHINGTON) — Shortages of critical medication have plagued the country, according to a recent congressional report, and a bipartisan pair of senators is now looking for answers from federal agencies about the impact the shortfall could potentially have on national security.
Michigan Democrat Gary Peters, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, a military veteran, are introducing legislation on Thursday that would require the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services to assess vulnerabilities in supply chains and to make plans to help prevent U.S. overreliance on foreign countries for key pharmaceuticals.
Shortages of some drugs have been an ongoing problem in the U.S. for more than a decade, according to a report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in March, which also found that COVID-19 exacerbated the issues.
The report found that there were 295 active pharmaceutical shortages in 2022 — for medications to treat everything from asthma to ADHD to cancer — in part because the U.S. depends on foreign providers in nations like China and India for some of the active pharmaceutical ingredients necessary to give medications their desire effect.
Reliance on these entities became a critical weakness for the U.S. during the pandemic when some foreign countries placed limits on exports of pharmaceuticals.
“The United States cannot continue to rely on our foreign adversaries, like China, for critically important materials to meet the medical needs of Americans,” Ernst said in a statement. “I’m sounding the alarm on our compromised medical supply chain. It’s past time to reduce our reliance on bad actors and protect the health of our citizens now and in the future.”
The Department of Defense’s inspector general found in 2021 that drug shortages were a potential threat to U.S. military operations. And the Senate Homeland Committee has said the deficits expose the U.S. to a potential security threat because reliance on foreign pharmaceuticals could be exploited by an adversary.
Sens. Ernst and Peters are proposing legislation that would require key agencies to build on existing lists of medicines and active ingredients necessary to respond to public health emergencies to note where there are supply chain vulnerabilities — and which drugs and components are sourced primarily from foreign countries.
Peters called it a “first step” in addressing possible security risks.
“Our federal government’s lack of visibility into the entire supply chain for critical medications limits our ability to address drug shortages that pose a serious national security risk and could compromise medical care for people all across the country, including service members,” Peters said in a statement.
“This bipartisan legislation will provide the federal government with a better understanding of how our overreliance on foreign nations for critical drugs threatens our military readiness and creates health risks for Americans, which will help lawmakers ensure our nation is better able to mitigate these national security threats,” the statement continued.
The legislation has bipartisan support, but it’s not yet clear whether it’ll have a path to the Senate floor this session.
