The Food and Drug Administration should publish the names of retailers who received romaine lettuce covered in the recent Fresh Express recall. The romaine was implicated in a Cyclospora outbreak traced to McDonald’s salads. So far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 286 people in 15 states have become ill in the outbreak. There have been 11 hospitalizations and no deaths.
President Trump is reportedly likely to nominate Robert Redfield of the University of Maryland to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This appointment would be disastrous for at least three reasons.
In the time leading up to her appointment of the agency that leads the charge on health issues such as tobacco control and thereafter, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald should have been actively divesting herself of holdings that posed a conflict of interest. Inexplicably, she decided to make matters even worse—at a time when her existing holdings were already drawing scrutiny.