Pesticides found in 207 food samples by FDA study.

The FDA's Pesticide Monitoring Report from 2015 contains a report on what pesticides were found in foods. It's a good idea to show these studies to show how dangerous some of the pesticides are, and how widespread they are. Organizations have known this for quite a long time. But some organizations that claim to protect your health are bought out by industry.

Excerpts:

In FY 2015 (October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2015), FDA analyzed 5,989 samples in its regulatory monitoring program: 5,572 human foods and 417 animal foods.  Because the violation rates of import samples are generally higher than for domestic samples, FDA tests more imported than domestic commodities (4,737 import and 835 domestic samples).  We collected imported human food samples from 111 countries and domestic human food samples from 39 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.

75% of food samples were found to be contaminated.

Source
FDA PDF from 2015.
More FDA Pesticide Monitoring Reports.

Henry Miller: Small amounts of poison are good for you

When people selectively ignore facts, that could be called religion, or a cult. So here's Henry I. Miller. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. He's written numerous articles about GMO foods. He is against labeling GMO foods and against informed decisions. He gets paid for writing articles supporting something so you know his opinion is biased.

Be careful with religious fanatics. The results could be bad.

Source
USRTK.org.

FDA resumes testing foods for glyphosate

1. The FDA is one of very few labs that can handle testing of lots of foods. But they need to release the data too, like the amount of glyphosate found in ppm. Very much like lead, there is no safe limit where a person can be exposed to glyphosate. The EPA limits of glyphosate exposure are fake, disingenuous, and dangerous. 
2. Investigation started about collusion between top EPA official and Monsanto. Some people suspect data was cooked or data unfavorable to Monsanto was simply omitted in testing reports.
3. A group of 20 scientists and doctors say glyphosate is not safe at any level.

Source
Huffington Post.

100s of lipsticks contain lead

Out of 20 brands the FDA tested 100s of lipsticks and found lead in every one. Red lipstick pigments are more likely to contain lead.

Lead causes irreversible brain damage, personality changes, and violent behavior and there is no safe level of exposure. Try to avoid it. 

Source
EWG.

FDA finds glyphosate in baby foods

Earlier in 2016 the FDA began testing foods for glyphosate. It has recently found glyphosate in baby foods containing oats. Keep in mind that does not mean all baby foods were tested. The current "safe" level of glyphosate in oats, from the EPA, is 30ppm.

Link to FDA PDF.  Backup of PDF on archive.is.

FDA poisoning women with Essure

Quote:

Women across America are furious with the FDA [and Bayer], and nowhere is this sentiment louder than on Twitter, where patients are posting daily about the devastating effects on their lives of a permanent, non-hormonal contraceptive called Essure.

Approved by the FDA in 2002, Essure is a non-hormonal birth control device consisting of two metal coils that are implanted in the fallopian tubes to prevent sperm from reaching the eggs. It’s supposed to be a less invasive alternative to tubal ligation (“getting your tubes tied”). The procedure is performed in a doctor’s office and, assuming everything goes as planned, does not require any recovery time.

Despite being advertised as relatively painless, for thousands of women Essure has been anything but. Over the last decade and change, the FDA has received nearly 10,000 reports of adverse events related to Essure. According to the FDA’s website, the most commonly reported side effects are pain (mostly abdominal), heavy and/or irregular periods, headaches, and fatigue. There have also been more than 600 reports of pregnancies. Of these pregnancies, nearly half resulted in miscarriages.

Read more here at Treato. 

Sources
Scoop It article.

Anonymous declares war against FDA, CDC and Monsanto

These are all organizations which claim people eating glyphosphate is safe. Safe just like thalidomide for pregnant moms, cigarettes, Vioxx, lead paint, asbestos, second hand smoke, DDT, PCBs, 2,4-D, BPA, and other pesticides.

The hacker Anonymous is also behind the latest Panama papers, showing how the US rich avoid taxes by hiding their money offshore.

Sources

1. Article. 
2. Panama Papers from Sueddeutsche. 
3. Panama Papers from ICIJ. 
4. Panama Papers torrents: PP Movie by Democracy Now, mp4. List of 151 companies that provide money hiding services; PDF is here. 37,000 names as a list. 

FDA hides CVs of panel members

Showing the Curriculum Vitae of panel members helps to find out who has conflicts of interest and may be making decisions based on corporate or personal profit instead of public safety.

Advisory committees furnish expert advice to federal government agencies. The FDA has approximately 50 advisory committees and panels that the agency advice on issues related to FDA-regulated products, such as whether the FDA should approve new medical products, request additional studies, or change a product’s labeling. The FDA posts on its website a roster of the members serving on each advisory committee, frequently accompanied by members’ curricula vitae (CV). The FDA frequently redacts the CVs, however, by blacking out information about the dates of degrees conferred, the names of professional colleagues and mentors, the amounts of grants received from private companies, and the names of unpublished articles. Many of the redactions were unaccompanied by any indication of why, but many were marked to indicate that the FDA believed that the redacted information fell under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions for confidential commercial information and for material the disclosure of which would cause an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

How can the public trust a group which has such suspicious behavior? Why can police arrest someone or search their car only for suspicious behavior and no solid evidence, but the same rules do not apply to US gov't departments?

Read the rest.
Source
Public Citizen Litigation Group. Apr 27, 2016.

FDA fast tracks risky flu vaccine

(Take this article with a grain of salt. The tone is laced with zombie-apocalypse and bible-thumping hysteria. Ignore the overly fantastic end-of-the-world tone and focus on the facts they are trying to deliver.)

The Novartis oil in water vaccine was banned in Italy due to 19 deaths but the FDA approves it in the US.

...the Food and Drug Administration just fast-tracked Novartis’ oil-in water, squalene adjuvant flu shot for approval in individuals 65 and older… Adjuvants are added to vaccines to hyper-stimulate the immune system. They are designed to remain in the body for a prolonged reaction... It’s a game of ‘Russian Roulette’ resulting in unpredictable adverse side effects ranging from heart attacks, stroke, myelitis and blindness to cognitive disfunction, skin disorders, miscarriages and fetal death.

Isn't an overreaction of the immune system part of asthma, some arthritis, and allergies and some other immunological conditions?

In 1991, the squalene adjuvanted anthrax vaccine was first experimentally given to tens of thousands of Gulf War soldiers which resulted in severe, permanent injuries. Squalene antibodies caused a cascade of autoimmune reactions known as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). Symptoms included severe headaches, nausea, muscular pain, joint swelling, short term memory loss, night sweats, depression. Autoimmune conditions ranged from fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, autoimmune thyroid disease, chronic fatigue syndrome to malar rashes, chronic headaches, non-healing skin lesions, musculoskeletal disorders (ALS), among others. More than twenty years later thousands of veterans are still ill. (And they are largely being ignored by the budget-strained Veterans Administration.)

I haven't found a direct connection between the series of shots given to Gulf War participants but the correlation is high. If you have studies about this please put links in the comments.

Source
News Target. Apr 28, 2016.

Margaret Hamburg bribed her way into FDA.

Former FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg bribed her way into the FDA by paying Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Major US company Johnson and Johnson also involved. 

Source
Natural News. April 25, 2016.
The lawsuit is here at Scribd.

FDA to start testing food for Roundup

• The FDA only started doing this after it was rebuked by the US Government Accountability Office for failing to publicize the danger. The FDA has also been sued for fraud. GAO found multiple problems in the FDA’s pesticide residue testing program.
• Other groups have done their own testing and found glyphosate in breast milk, honey, cereal, wheat flour, infant formula, and more.
• Multiple sufferers of gluten intolerance and Celiac disease report they cannot eat wheat in the US, but can do so in Europe. So the problem may not be the gluten itself, but the chemicals or pesticides in the flour.
• The USDA will start testing corn and soybeans. (Which happen to be the worst GMOs on the market.)

Source

1. Gillam, Cary. Civileats.com. Feb 17, 2016.  Article.
2. USDA Pesticide Data Program. Considered the authority on pesticides in foods. Page here.  

What does "organic" really mean?

"Organic" means using less pesticides, or no artificial pesticides, and little or no GMOs. But standards vary widely across the world. Organic food product is, for the most part, a self-regulated industry with government guidance in some countries.

US Standards

The USDA National Organic Program creates standards for the US organic farming industry. But since the USDA is part of the FDA, and the FDA is well-known to be soft on GMOs and pesticides, the US "standard" is questionable at best. (March 2016: There is currently a lawsuit against the FDA for violating it's own regulations.)

The USDA NOP has the following areas of responsibility:

1. Manage organic operations. The NOP Intro to Organic Practices PDF is here.
2. Develop regulations and guidance on organic farming. CFR Regulations are here. The NOP organic handbook is here.
3. Manage the national list of allowed and prohibited substances. 
4. Investigate regulatory violation complaints. 
5. Accredit certifying agents. 
6. And a few more items. 
7. Here is a list of certified organic companies in the US and which products are certified organic. There are several fields to search on including company name, city, state, country, and certified products. 
8. Conform to regulations when exporting or importing organic foods.

How USDA NOP defines "organic" practices

1. Practices PDF here. 
2. Avoid use of synthetic use of fertilizers. Note that the US regulations do not ban synthetic fertilizers. But, nitrogen is nitrogen unless it's contaminated with something dangerous. 
3. Avoid sewage sludge* and biosolids. Sewage sludge can contain many toxic chemicals including heavy metals. 
4. Avoid irradiation and GMOs.
5. Use cover crops to reduce erosion.  
6. Use organic seeds unless that variety is not available as an organic product. In this case they can use non-GMO seeds.
7. Use crop rotation to reduce pests and diseases. 
8. Manage pests using Prevention, Avoidance, Monitoring, and Suppression (PAMS). Predatory insects are allowed. As a last resort the growing can use organic pesticides. I assume Bt is allowed in this case as it's a "naturally occurring organism" allowed by the NOP.
9. Organic crops must not receive overspray from non-organic crops if the farm grows both. 
10. Land that has had conventional pesticides applied cannot be used for organic crops for 36 months. 
11. More guidelines on animals are in the PDF.

* Sewage sludge is the sludge left over from sewage processing. Due to poor US regulations and interference from industry, sewage sludge can contain heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, some of which are absorbed by certain crops. From Wikipedia:

Class A sludge is typically dried and pasteurized, and is also known as "exceptional" quality. Class B includes all sludge not classified as Class A. Class B sludge is typically "undigested" and is volatile. Both classes of sludge may still contain radioactive or pharmaceutical wastes.

Now you know the basics of organic food farming.

CDC says neonics poison water

Source: "Water Hazard. Aquatic Contamination by Neonicotinoid insecticides in the United States."  CDC PDF here. Sep 2015. 40 pgs.

Neonicotinoids, or "neonics", have widespread use, but also as seed coatings. The neonics are water soluable, and so they are taken up by the plant that grows from the treated seed, making the whole plant toxic to almost all insects. But the neonics are not controlled, they are also dispersed in the land, air and water. Neonics include: acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam. They are systemic insecticides meaning the plant absorbs the pesticide, and no matter what part of a plant an insect eats, the insect dies.

Scientists across Canada, the US, and Europe keep finding neonic levels that exceed safe levels, and which harm aquatic creatures. The hundreds of neonic products approved by the EPA are supported by sparse and incomplete studies, with huge gaps in knowledge at important areas. What's more, the FDA appears to be on collusion, with employees taking bribes, and finally a lawsuit against the FDA itself.

The report of neonics in waterways considered the most comprehensive is one from October 2014 by University of Saskatchewan toxicologist Professor Christy Morrissey. The study is called "Neonicotinoid contamination of global surface waters and associated risk to aquatic invertegrates: a review." The abstract from ScienceDirect is here.

1. The EPA's toxicity levels are far too lax for these chemicals and lack common scientific support, especially outside the US. 
2. Runoff cannot be controlled and neonics end up in streams, then in rivers, and in the lakes they dump into. 
3. Even bird declines correlate to neonic contamination.  
4. Coated seeds are exempt from pesticide polices, per EPA rules. Exemptions almost always mean a company lobbied for said exemption. 
5. These chemicals are very persistent. They do not go away easily on their own. Thiamethoxam can degrade in water from sunlight, but degradation is almost non-existent below 3 inches of water. 
6. Most toxicity studies are acute studies, and only look at how many animals die at a certain level of pesticide. There are almost no studies about the effects of repeated exposure or low exposure over time. 
7. Daphnia magna, a type of water flea, is used in 116% of all neonic studies, yet D. magna is known to be resistant to neonics on the level of 200-300% more than other species. D. magna is simply a very large species of daphnia. The studies that use D. magna are inappropriate for determining toxicity. 
8. The highest concentrations of neonics were found in the Southern High Plains states where farming is common. The highest level there was 225ppb. There is a graph in the PDF showing other states. 
9. A 2015 report by the USGS and Michelle Hladik and Dana Kolpin, found neonics in 63% of US waterways. 
10. The same report finds that neonics were found in all 79 water samples from Iowa. 
11. A 2011 California study report found imidacloprid in 89% of 67 samples.
12. 15 million households rely on well water taken from aquifers. Some aquifers can span 2-5 states. Once neonics get into an aquifer it spreads to household wells of other counties and states.

Links

1. Van Dijk, Tessa C., Marja A. Van Staalduinen, and Jeroen P. Van der Sluijs. Macro-Invertebrate Decline in Surface Water Polluted with Imidacloprid. PLOS ONE. 2013; 8(5). e62374.  Full PLOS ONE study here. Link to NIH study here. 
2. Morrissey, Professor Christy, et al. Neonicotinoid contamination of global surface waters and associated risk to aquatic invertegrates: a review. Environment International. 2014. Abstract here.  PDF of full study here.

Lawsuit against FDA alleges fraud and crimes, here are the 24 PDFs

Lawsuit Unleashes Documents Alleging FDA Covered up Risks of GMOs since 1991. (This article is free and open source.)

Steven Druker filed the lawsuit against the FDA and now has 44,000 emails from the FDA. His website, Alliance for Biointegrity, has 24 PDFs of emails and memos showing how the FDA knew GMOs were dangerous, and made policy assuming GMOs were safe anyway. What's more is Druker puts on his website all the laws the FDA has broken.

There is even a torrrent for the 24 PDF files but torrent links are not allowed on Blogger.com.


Here's the TOC.txt file:

FDA Scientists Discuss Various Safety Concerns

1.  Comments from Dr. Linda Kahl, FDA compliance officer, to Dr. James Maryanski, FDA Biotechnology Coordinator, about the Federal Register document “Statement of Policy: Foods from Genetically Modified Plants.”  Dated January 8, 1992. (3 pages) View Document

2.  Memorandum from Dr. Edwin J. Mathews to the Toxicology Section of the Biotechnology Working Group. Subject: “Analysis of the Major Plant Toxicants.” Dated October 28, 1991. (2 pages) View Document

3.  Memorandum from Dr. Samuel I. Shibko to Dr. James Maryanski, FDA Biotechnology Coordinator.  Subject: “Revision of Toxicology Section of the Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from Genetically Modified Plants.” Dated January 31, 1992. (3 pages) View Document

4.  Comments from Dr. Louis J. Pribyl re: the “Biotechnology Draft Document, 2/27/92.” Dated March 6, 1992. (5 pages) View Document

5.  Comments from Dr. Louis J. Pribyl re: “… the March 18, 1992 Version of the Biotechnology Document.” Dated March 18, 1992. (1 page) View Document

6.  Comments from Division of Food Chemistry and Technology and Division of Contaminants Chemistry. Subject: “Points to Consider for Safety Evaluation of Genetically Modified Foods.  Supplemental Information.”  Dated November 1, 1991. (3 pages) View Document

7. Memorandum from Dr. Mitchell Smith, Head, Biological and Organic Chemistry Section, to Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator.  Subject: “Comments on Draft Federal Register Notice on Food Biotechnology, Dec. 12, 1991 draft.”  Dated January 8, 1992. (2 pages) View Document

8.  Letter from Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator, to Dr. Bill Murray, Chairman of the Food Directorate, Canada.  Subject: the safety assessment of foods and food ingredients developed through new biotechnology. Dated October 23, 1991. (2 pages) View Document

9.  Comments from Dr. Carl B. Johnson on the “draft statement of policy 12/12/91.” Dated January 8, 1992. (2 pages) View Document

10. Memorandum from Dr. Gerald B. Guest, Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine, to Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator.  Subject: “Regulation of Transgenic Plants–FDA Draft Federal Register Notice on Food Biotechnology.”  Dated February 5, 1992. (4 pages) View Document

Specific Objections to the Use of Antibiotic-Resistant Marker Genes

11. Memorandum from Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator, to Dr. Murray Lumpkin.  Subject: “Use of Kanamycin Resistance Marker Gene in Tomatoes.”  (1 page) View Document

12. Memorandum from Dr. Murray Lumpkin to Dr. Bruce Burlington.  Subject: “The tomatoes that will eat Akron.” Dated December 17, 1992. (7 pages) View Document

13. Memorandum from Dr. Albert Sheldon to Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator.  Subject: “Use of Kanamycin Resistance Markers in Tomatoes.” Dated March 30, 1993.  (3 pages) View Document

Safety Questions Raised by Tests on the Flavr Savr Tomato™–the First Bioengineered Plant that Came to Market

14. Memorandum from Dr. Fred Hines to Dr. Linda Kahl.  Subject: “FLAVR SAVR Tomato:” … “Pathology Branch’s Evaluation of Rats with Stomach Lesions From Three Four-Week Oral (Gavage) Toxicity Studies” … “and an Expert Panel’s Report.”  Dated June 16, 1993. (3 pages) View Document

15. Memorandum from Robert J. Scheuplein, Ph.D. to the FDA Biotechnology Coordinator and others. Subject: “Response to Calgene Amended Petition.” Dated October 27, 1993. (4 pages) View Document

16. Memorandum from Dr. Carl B. Johnson to Dr. Linda Kahl & Others. Subject: “Favr Savr(TM) tomato; significance of pending DHEE question.” Dated Dec 7, 1993. (1 page) View Document

17. Memorandum from Dr. Fred Hines to Dr. Linda Kahl.  Subject: “FLAVR SAVR Tomato”… “Pathology Branch’s Remarks to Calgene Inc.’s Response to FDA Letter of June 29, 1993.”  Dated December 10, 1993. (3 pages) View Document

Additional Evidence of Improprieties In The Formation Of FDA Policy On Bioengineered Foods

18. Note from Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator, to Mr. Michael Taylor.  Subject: “Food Biotechnology Policy Development.”  Dated October 7, 1993. (1 page) View Document

19.Document titled “FDA REGULATION OF FOOD PRODUCTS DERIVED FROM GENETICALLY ALTERED PLANTS: POINTS TO CONSIDER”  Not dated. (3 pages) View Document

20. Memorandum from Dr. James Maryanksi, Biotechnology Coordinator, to the Director of the Center for Applied Nutrition.  Subject: “FDA Task Group on Food Biotechnology: Progress Report 2.” Dated August 15, 1991. (1 page) View Document

21. Memorandum from David Kessler, Commissioner of Food & Drugs. Subject: “FDA Proposed Statement of Policy Clarifying the Regulation of Food Derived from Genetically Modified Plants–DECISION.” Dated March 20, 1992. (4 pages) View Document

22. Letter from Terry Medley, J.D. (of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), to Dr. James Maryanski, Biotechnology Coordinator.  Subject: “Comments on FDA Draft Statement of Policy on foods derived from new plant varieties, including plants derived by recombinant DNA techniques. Dated April 2, 1992. (5 pages) View Document

23. Note from Eric Katz (Dept. of Health & Human Services) to John Gallivan. Subject: “Food Biotechnology Policy Statement.”  Dated March 27, 1992. (2 pages) View Document

24. Memorandum from James B. MacRae, Jr. (of the Office of Management and Budget), for C. Boyden Gray (President Bush’s White House counsel).  Subject: “FDA Food Biotechnology Policy.”  Dated March 21, 1992. (2 pages) View Document

Update 4/7/16: More groups sue FDA. Case 3:16-cv-01574 PDF here. Plaintiffs include Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice.

FDA and gluten-free labeling

In 2013 the FDA issued a final rule about the definition of products that are "gluten free". This definition said that food can be called gluten free if it contains 20ppm of gluten or less. For some people with Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, this is still too much gluten. I.e. they cannot rely on the label to help them.

A history of "safe" products, US food in the 1800s

It took 27 years to pass a law about food safety and purity, but in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed. It was supposed to ban trafficking in adulterated or mislabeled food. Mislabeled food being claims that food contains X when it doesn't, or failure to mention the drug has poweful drugs like cocaine or morphine. The book The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, played a big role in exposing fraudulent tactics of the food industry in the 1800s. Some examples:

1. Ketchup sometimes contained rotten tomatoes, including maggots.
2. Sausage used a lot of garlic to cover up the smell of rancid meat. The poorest people frequently got sick from this meat but it was all they could afford. 
3. Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine, but when that was outlawed, Coke replaced it with high levels of caffeine. Coca-Cola replaced cocaine with caffeine in 1903. 
4. Sodium benzoate was banned in the 1906 law but it is in use today. There are some accounts of sodium benzoate in sodas combining with another chemical, under the right conditions, releasing benzene, a highly toxic chemical. 
5. This and the next 2 examples from the UK: To whiten bread, for example, bakers sometimes added alum (K₂SO₄.Al₂(SO₄)₃.24H₂O) and chalk to the flour. (Source.)
6. Mashed potatoes, plaster of Paris (calcium sulphate), pipe clay and even sawdust could be added to increase the weight of their loaves. 
7. Rye flour or dried powdered beans could be used to replace wheat flour and the sour taste of stale flour could be disguised with ammonium carbonate.

In 1938 this law was replaced with the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Medicine and pharmacology was still in its infancy and "patent medicine" made all kinds of claims it could not prove, and they were also the target of the 1906 act. These "patent medicines" often contained high level of medicines (which was one way people got alcohol during Prohibition), morphine or opitate derivatives. If a baby got too much morphine it could kill her.

Examples of Ketchup

1. The caption reads “Made from Decomposed Material. Prosecuted July 3, 1909. Fined $50. N.J. 388.” The Notice of Judgement on this product called for the condemnation of 745 cases of this tomato catsup. It was found to contain high levels of yeasts, spores, bacteria, and mold.
2. "When the food law went into effect in North Dakota there was but one brand of catsup, so far as I am able to find by my records, which was pure-that is, free from chemical preservatives and coal tar coloring matters. Many of the catsups offered for sale in the State were made from the waste products from canners-pulp, skins, ripe tomatoes, green tomatoes, starch paste in considerable quantity, coal tar colors, chemical preservatives, usually benzoate of soda or salicylic acid, the whole highly spiced and not always free from saccharin. In other instances the basis for the catsup was largely pumpkin." From The Alarming Adulteration of Food and Drugs by Porter J. M'Cumber.

Examples of Meat Adulteration

From Porter J. M'Cumber. "The Alarming Adulteration of Food and Drugs," The Independent. 58: 2927 (January 5, 1905). 28-29, 31. 

1. "More than 90 per cent of the local meat markets in the State were using chemical preservatives, and in nearly every butcher shop could be found a bottle of Freezem, preservaline or iceine, as well as Bull Meat Flour. The amount of borax or boracic acid employed in these meats varied to a considerable extent, and expressed in terms of boracic acid in sausages and hamburger steak would probably range from 20 grains to 45 grains per pound, while the medical dose is from 5 to 9 grains per day. The use of these chemicals is not confined to local butchers; scarcely a ham could be found that did not contain borax. In the dried beef, in the smoked meats, in the canned bacon, in the canned chipped beef, boracic acid or borates is a common ingredient."  
2. "Ninety per cent of the so-called French peas which we have taken up in North Dakota were found to contain copper salts in varying quantities, and in a few samples, in addition to copper salts, there were present aluminum salts." 

As you can see, corruption in the US food industry has been going on for 150+ years. It was a similar problem in Britain. See "The Fight Against Food Adulteration" from rsc.org.

Links

Book: "Swindled : the dark history of food fraud, from poisoned candy to counterfeit coffee."

The Fight Against Food Adulteration. Food problems in the UK. 
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. Exposing the fraud in the US meat industry in the 1800s. Free, in many formats including HTML, epub, and PDF. More sources of The Jungle from Archive.org.
Virtual Museum of Public Service.
Wikipedia, Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

About the FDA and product recalls

The US FDA is supposed to keep consumers safe from bad food and bad ingredients. It is also responsible for the safety of drugs, cosmetics, biologics, animal health. It creates and enforces regulations to this end. They are supposed to inspect food at factories, and not let bad food get to the public.  A "recall" happens when the food has already reached consumers, but then is found to be contaminated. For safety reasons, a whole batch, or several days' worth of food is recalled and taken off the shelves.

From the FDA page:

Recalls are a firm's removal or correction of a marketed product that the FDA considers to be in violation of the laws it administers and against which the agency would initiate legal action, e.g., seizure. Recalls may be conducted on a firm's own initiative, by FDA request, or by FDA order under statutory authority.

Recalls could be based on: undeclared allergens (like milk, eggs, almonds, etc. I didn't know this was an actual rule, but it's a great idea), contamination with listeria, E. coli, or because morphine was "super potent". Although the FDA is fine with a moderate amount of bug parts in chocolate and other foods. 60 parts are allowed per 100g of chocolate. The Food Defect Action Levels (Wikipedia), first published in 1995, details the acceptable levels of contaminants in food. The FDA claims they "pose no inherent hazard to health.". In ground thyme, there are 925 or more insect "filth" allowed per 10 grams. That's 92.5 or more per gram. What percent of that would be insect parts by weight? (FDA page on chocolate bugs is here. The FDA site timed out (they may be doing maintenance at the time I went there) so here is the same page from archive.org, Oct 1, 2015, the most recent page archive.org has.)

Recent food recalls are here at the FSIS part of USDA. You'll have to click on the recall to find out how many pounds of the produce were recalled.

Here's a summary of 2014 recalls. The US gov't often does not have the resources to update these pages often, and they probably use page counters to determine which pages are the most popular, so those pages will get updated first. It contains summaries broken down by: Class (I, II. or III), reason (listeria, STEC, E. Coli, undeclared allergen, salmonella, etc), and by species (beef, pork, mixed, poultry, ovine). The total pounds are also given for each category. For 2014 there were 94 recalls, with 18.675 million pounds of produce recalled. 13 million pounds were in the category or beef products.

While the FDA tries to catch products before they reach the public, some problems are caused by shipping, for example, conditions are not cool enough during transport. This can be a problem in the middle of summer when coolers in semi-trucks cannot keep up with the heat.

Links

1. FDA recalls. 
2. Recalls.gov. 
3. USDA current recalls for food. 
4. You can ask questions food safety at AskKaren.gov, the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) rep. 
5. For inspection policies, go to askfsis.gov.
6. Foodsafety.gov recalls. Seems to have more info on recalls. Some of these sites seem duplicative. 
7. Open.fda.gov has an API to get recall information from their database. The user constructs a web URL in a browser and grabs data that returns from it. You will need to ask them for an API key, which is a form of registration.