At this point, how active of an investigation is this? Oftentimes we see them open an investigation, which gets the headlines, but are they really committed to it?

Yeah, I mean, there was an initial demand to Dr. Rachel and a follow up demand sort of criticizing her responses.

And when the article ran, I did hear I heard from another doctor whose practice had been targeted.

Someone, you know, sort of anonymous tipster said talk to this doctor in this town and he's been targeted and and i haven't um you know followed up with him so it's it's unclear i mean there were 20 civil document demands in that um initial request and some of them were to pfizer and united health so it's unclear you know how cross-cutting this is across texas and how how persistent they are and And sort of where this leads, I mean, there is a community and sort of the vaccine critic world of litigators and lawyers, and now they have a big ballast of medical information from these pediatricians, 10 years of records.

that they can use to maybe develop theories to refine their case.

So it's unclear exactly what's going on behind the scenes.

We tried to reach Mr. Paxton's office a couple times, emails and texts to his spokesman, but nobody responded to me at all.

Do you see it chipping away at people's belief and safety and trusting their medical professionals?

At this point, how active of an investigation is this? Oftentimes we see them open an investigation, which gets the headlines, but are they really committed to it?

yeah i mean there was an initial demand to dr racial and a follow-up demand sort of criticizing her responses and when the article ran i did hear um i heard from another doctor whose practice had been targeted someone you know sort of anonymous tipsters that had talked to this doctor in this town and he's been targeted and I haven't followed up with him.

So it's unclear.

I mean, there were 20 civil document demands in that initial request and some of them were to Pfizer and United Health.

So it's unclear how cross-cutting this is across Texas and how persistent they are.

And sort of where this leads, I mean, there is a community and sort of the vaccine critic world of litigators and lawyers, and now they have a big ballast of medical information from these pediatricians, 10 years of records.

that they can use to maybe develop theories to refine their case.

Do you see it chipping away at people's belief and safety and trusting their medical professionals?

We've covered those outbreaks in depth, but what did your reporting actually find?

What we found was that about 30 months ago, the Trump administration delayed a rule that would have made companies like Taco Bell, which is where this outbreak was first detected, report really thorough information to federal officials who are trying to trace this back.

So we found that there were requests for this information starting on July 1st, July 3rd, July 8th.

It wasn't until the 13th that the FDA actually got this information to enable them to really trace back where the cyclospora came from.

And there are some people who think that if that rule hadn't been delayed, the rule required that reporting within 24 hours, that we could have ended this a lot sooner and gotten that lettuce off the shelves.

What does this say about food safety safeguards as they are right now in the United States?

I mean, I think the fact that we care and we pay so much attention to them means that the federal government could invest more.

And if they did, would that mean we would detect more and feel like food is less safe potentially? But every time there's one of these big outbreaks, I usually take sort of a a deep dive or a dig into it.

We've covered those outbreaks in depth, but what did your reporting actually find?

What we found was that about 30 months ago, the Trump administration delayed a rule that would have made companies like Taco Bell, which is where this outbreak was first detected, report really thorough information to federal officials who are trying to trace this back.

So we found that there were requests for this information starting on July 1st, July 3rd, July 8th.

It wasn't until the 13th that the FDA actually got this information to enable them to really trace back where the cyclospora came from.

And there are some people who think that if that rule hadn't been delayed, the rule required that reporting within 24 hours, that we could have ended this a lot sooner and gotten that lettuce off the shelves.

What does this say about food safety safeguards as they are right now in the United States?

I mean, I think the fact that we care and we pay so much attention to them means that the federal government, you know, could invest more.

And if they did, would that mean we would detect more and feel like food is less safe, potentially? But every time there's one of these big outbreaks, I usually take sort of a...

College cafeterias, corporations, et cetera.

Mm-hmm, yeah, lots of different sites.

So this was something that I ran by a food safety expert, and she said, yeah, this is something food safety advocates have been talking about for years, saying FDA needs to have the authority to tell companies that you need to, in no uncertain terms, disclose your supply chain in the event of a recall like this so everybody knows what's what.

Because if you're a mom-and-pop restaurant, and you're looking at this recall, you might be throwing your hands up and not even know if your regional supplier has been affected by this.

The number of inspectors you're describing and the number of facilities that they're responsible for suggests that the US government must understand that it's not gonna catch every contamination, so what's the logic there?

I mean, that's really sort of a reflection of the funding that FDA's gotten over the years from Congress, and while that funding's sort of stagnated, the FDA's passed rules for food processors to follow, and they really put a lot of reliance on the companies to know their business and take care of it.

Basically like, "You know what you make.

You know what the risks are, so test your products, be very careful, and control your risks."

Christina, can you explain what the function of this advisory panel is and what peptides they're looking at right now?

Yeah, well, first thing, I just want to go back to your question, not to be annoying, but approval is not actually on the table here.

What this committee did is they looked at listing.

This is a whole new world that we don't talk about very often, but it's almost something you'd consider kind of a loophole in a way.

they're considering whether to list these peptides as substances that specialized pharmacies can routinely compound.

Basically, this is sort of written into the law for these very rare incidents where maybe a patient with a rare disease who has a certain allergy or intolerance needs a specific bulk substance made individually in a special pharmacy and so this is what's at the table and there's absolutely an expectation that sort of the intent of this law is going to be distorted because you you have these huge compounding pharmacy companies like hymns and Noom expressing interest.

You have Rite Aid already has peptides like riteaid.com forward slash peptides.

Christina, can you talk a little bit more about the reaction from from some medical professionals in the wake of these advisory panel hearings?