WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration called on drug companies Wednesday to help limit the use of antibiotics given to farm animals, a decades-old practice that scientists say has contributed to a surge in dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria.

Antibiotics are mixed with animal feed to help livestock, pigs and
chickens put on weight and stay healthy in crowded barns. Scientists
have warned that this routine use leads to the growth of
antibiotic-resistant germs that can be passed to humans.

Surprise rippled across America last month as a new wave of consumers discovered that hamburgers often contained ammonia-treated beef, or what critics dub “pink slime.”

What they may not have known is that ammonia – often associated with cleaning products – was cleared by U.S. health officials nearly 40 years ago and is used in making many foods, including cheese. Related compounds have a role in baked goods and chocolate products.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday warned consumers not to take a product called “Japan Rapid Weight Loss Diet Pills” because they contain a suspected cancer-causing agent.

The pills, advertised as promoting weight loss, are distributed by a company called Xiushentang and sold on popular web sites including Amazon.com, said the FDA.

Consumers are advised to stop using the pills — which are packaged in three colors: green, yellow and blue — and discard them. They should also see a doctor if they have experienced any side effects, the agency said.

Government health officials are investigating a growing outbreak of salmonella food poisoning possibly tied to restaurant sushi that may have sickened at least 90 people in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

The outbreak of salmonella Bareilly that may have sent seven people to the hospital is mostly clustered on the eastern seaboard and the Gulf Coast, although cases have been reported as far west as Missouri and Texas, according to an internal Food and Drug Administration memo. No deaths have been reported

In a move that highlights dilemmas plaguing the U.S. drug supply, federal regulators warned a major manufacturer about problems including bugs in vials of sterile drugs — insects, literally — the same day that health officials allowed the firm to ramp up scarce medications for kids with cancer.

Food and Drug Administration officials on Tuesday posted a warning letter sent to APP Pharmaceuticals LLC of Schaumberg, Ill., citing violations at a New York plant that included insects found in clean rooms and in vials of distributed drugs and failure to report defects such as vials contaminated with foreign matter and glass.

The firm also had problems with documenting sterile technique and was marketing unapproved drugs, according to the warning.

(CBS/AP) A Food and Drug Administration scientific advisory panel says dissolvable tobacco products could reduce health risks compared with smoking cigarettes. But the agency also warned the products have the potential to increase the overall number of tobacco users.

Tobacco use claimed 6 million lives in 2011, report shows
PICTURES: Shocking ads: Tips from smokers

Dissolvable tobacco is finely milled tobacco pressed into shapes like tablets that slowly dissolve in a user’s mouth. It is gaining the attention of tobacco companies looking to make up for a decline in cigarette use as smokers face tax hikes, growing health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma.

U.S. health regulators will add warnings to the labels of widely used cholesterol lowering drugs, such as Lipitor, to indicate that they may raise levels of blood sugar and could cause memory loss.

The Food and Drug administration announced the changes to the safety
information on the labels of statins such as Pfizer Inc’s Lipitor,
AstraZeneca’s Crestor and Merck & Co’s Zocor.

Statins have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of heart
attack and heart disease, and the FDA said the new information should
not scare people into stopping taking the drugs.

“The value of statins in preventing heart disease has been clearly
established,” Amy Egan, deputy director for safety in FDA’s Division of
Metabolism and Endocrinology Products, said in a statement. “Their
benefit is indisputable, but they need to be taken with care and
knowledge of their side effects.”

How can a drug company run out of medicine because of quality concerns? They must have people checking everything that goes on in the company. Do you think it is like everything else it boils down to money. Cut back here cut back there and work the employees as much as you can and don’t  appreciate what they do,and then they just don’t care. This is to important not to find out what is going on and fast. Two weeks supply is to close for these child that need this drug. Someone needs to get their self in gear and do something. I know the company voluntarily suspended it  there  self but came on this does not need to happen.

A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.

“This is dire,” said Valerie Jensen, associate director of the Food
and Drug Administration’s drug shortages program. “Supplies are just not
meeting demand.”

The drug is methotrexate, and the cancer it treats is known as acute
lymphoblastic leukemia, or A.L.L., which most often strikes children
ages 2 to 5.

It is an unusually virulent cancer of white blood cells that are
overproduced in bone marrow and invade other parts of the body.

Potentially contaminated processing equipment and problems with packing and storage of whole cantaloupes at a Colorado farm likely led to the deadliest listeria outbreak in the United States in 25 years, which has so far claimed 25 lives in a dozen states, federal health regulators said Wednesday.

Pools of water on the floor of the Jensen Farms packing facility in Granada, Colo., equipment that was not easily cleaned and sanitized and failure to cool newly harvested cantaloupes before sending them to cold storage all contributed to the outbreak, the first-ever listeria contamination blamed on whole melons, federal Food and Drug Administration officials said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials said Wednesday more illnesses and possibly more deaths may be linked to an outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe in coming weeks.

So far, the outbreak has caused at least 72 illnesses — including up to 16 deaths — in 18 states, making it the deadliest food outbreak in the United States in more than a decade.

The heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said consumers who have cantaloupes produced by Jensen Farms in Colorado should throw them out. If they are not sure where the fruit is from, they shouldn’t eat it.