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Carbon monoxide has congressmen seeing red

Democrats in Congress will push for a ban on MAP until safety can be proven.

Pw 7971 Salmon Steaks

Tired of waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to restrict use of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) with fresh meat, key congressmen have started a drive to make FDA action moot.

Already major chain Safeway, Inc., has agreed to stop selling fresh meat packaged with carbon monoxide, which Reps. John Dingell (D-MI) and Bart Stupak (D-MI), top Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, claim masks food spoilage. The two legislators wrote to a number of meat retailers and marketers at the end of June asking them to justify their use of MAP.

Besides the letter writing campaign, Stupak also intends to introduce legislation that would ban use of carbon monoxide in packaging for a wide range of food products. “Approximately 20 percent of the recent seafood treated with carbon monoxide was contaminated or rotten, but looked ‘good’ with carbon monoxide treatment,” he explains.

Safeway bails on CO

Safeway threw in the towel even before Stupak tossed a bill in the congressional hopper. In a letter to Dingell and Stupak on July 16, Michael McGinnis, senior vice president for meat & seafood at Safeway, wrote that only a “limited selection of fresh meat products in our stores are supplied to us utilizing carbon monoxide modified atmospheric packaging.”

He explained that Safeway had undertaken that limited initiative in the name of food safety, because MAP limits additional handling at critical points of contact. McGinnis explained Safeway’s decision to terminate that limited effort as necessary to counter questions being asked by consumers, alerted to the issue by press reports about Dingell’s and Stupak’s original letter. Those consumers, McGinnis added, “may be confused.”

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