Celebrity chef Mario Batali bets on food and wine emporium

No need to head to Europe for a sumptuous home-cooked Italian meal, says celebrity chef and author Mario Batali. “We are bringing the Italian dream and American dream together,” Batali, the best-known backer of a new food concept called Eataly, told CNBC, from the floor of the mega-retail store in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. The 42,500-square-foot restaurant and grocery space also has a 4,500-square-foot open-air rooftop beer garden. Within that…

Outbreak linked to ground beef puts focus on meat oversight

ST. PAUL — The first known U.S. outbreak linked to a rare strain of E. coli in ground beef is prompting a fresh look at tougher regulations to protect the nation’s meat supply. Three people in Maine and New York became ill this summer after eating ground beef traced back to a Cargill plant in Wyalusing, Pa. Cargill Meat Solutions, a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Cargill , recalled about 8,500 pounds of ground beef on Saturday, and regulators warned consumers to throw out frozen meat purchased at BJ’s Wholesale Clubs in eight eastern states. The ground beef had a use-by-or-freeze-by date of July 1. Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, who was appointed undersecretary of food safety …

Bone drugs may raise throat cancer risk

LONDON (AP) — People who take bone-strengthening drugs for several years may have a slightly higher risk of esophageal cancer, a new study suggests. The findings are in contrast to another recent study that used the same database of 80,000 patients and concluded that there was no link between the drugs and esophageal cancer. That study was published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association . Authors of the new study say they tracked patients for nearly twice as long — nearly …

Food safety groups slam USDA egg graders at farms in recall

U.S. Department of Agriculture staff regularly on site at two Iowa egg processors implicated in a national salmonella outbreak were supposed to enforce rules against the presence of disease-spreading rodents and other vermin, federal regulations show. The USDA egg graders, part of an industry-paid program, were at Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms at least 40 hours a week — including before the outbreak — inspecting the size and quality of eggs inside processing buildings. Though USDA regulations say buildings and “outside premises” must be free of conditions that harbor vermin, the agency takes a narrow view of its responsibilities. Under the USDA’s unwritten interpretation of the regulations, egg graders only look for vermin inside the specific processing…

Diet drug Meridia raises heart attack, stroke risk

A company-sponsored study found that the weight-loss drug Meridia raised heart attack and stroke risk in patients with pre-existing heart disease, according to a report out today. The publication comes just two weeks before the Food and Drug Administration is to convene an advisory panel of outside experts to discuss the fate of Meridia, which the agency approved in 1997. “It is difficult to discern a credible rationale for keeping this medication on the market,” concludes an accompanying editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine . Based on preliminary data, the FDA’s counterpart for the European Union suspended Meridia’s marketing license in January, but the FDA only added stronger information on the label …

Botox maker to pay $600M to resolve federal investigation

WASHINGTON — Allergan, the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, says it will pay $600 million to settle a yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug. The company said Wednesday that it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of “misbranding,” in which the company’s marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children. READ: Allergan’s statement Companies are prohibited from promoting drugs for unapproved…

‘You can’t stand the Jets,’ and Rex Ryan sure likes it that way

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Rex Ryan figures he has melted off 50-plus pounds — the equivalent of about a dozen NFL helmets — after having lap-band surgery in the offseason. “I learned to eat like a human being,” cracks the playful New York Jets coach, who has yet to lose his food lust for all things junk and Mexican. But Ryan has not lost his stomach for saying what he thinks — even if he realizes a buffet line of teams craves to make the barrel-shaped coach eat his words. The surgery shrunk his ample waistline — R-squared topped the scales at 340 pounds last summer — but it did nothing to reduce his…

FDA reports on rats, manure piles at egg recall companies

New government reports on conditions at the two Iowa egg producers at the center of a recall of 550 million eggs paint a grim picture. One report describes Wright County Egg as filthy, rat and fly-infested and so overflowing with manure that in several cases doors could not be closed. The other, Hillandale Farms, had multiple unsealed rodent holes into its henhouses, liquid manure leaking from a manure pit and as many as 50 escaped hens tracking manure into the henhouse. The conditions at the two farms led the Food and Drug Administration to announce today that it plans to immediately launch inspections of all egg-laying operations in with more than 50,000 laying hens, which account for …

J&J unit recalls hip replacement products

TRENTON, N.J. — Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) artificial joint business is recalling two hip replacement products, just two days after getting hit with a government warning that it is illegally marketing two other products. It is the 11th J&J recall since September. DePuy Orthopaedics said Thursday it is recalling two hip replacement products because data, about to be released, show higher-than-expected rates of patients needing a second hip replacement procedure. ON THE WEB: Info from DuPay Within five years, one…

Food-safety experts: Finding an outbreak’s source not easy

Government food-safety experts say they are in a tough spot when it comes to publicly fingering a product or company in an outbreak such as the one currently linked to a half-billion eggs distributed across the USA. “The mantra is: You have to be fast and right. You can never be fast enough, and you always have to be right,” says Ian Williams, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s outbreak response branch. …

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