Headline roundup July 5

Pledge of Allegiance Tribute : Red Skelton In honor of July 4, a classic commentary.

U.K. bagged salad recall
From the story passed on by K-State food safety network:

Professor Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia’s centre for Food Safety, was quoted as saying, "One of the biggest concerns I have is with fresh cut produce that you buy in a bag and is ready to eat. You open it up and you feel safe eating it, but we have had severe outbreaks associated with these foods. The manufacturers say they have washed it and that you can eat it straight from the bag – to me that means that it should be safe to eat. But what we have learned from all these outbreaks is that it apparently isn’t."It is thought that fresh vegetables, fruit and salads become contaminated with bacteria because they are grown in contaminated soils.In an attempt to cut costs, it is common for some manufacturers to process their produce in the field, further exposing the food to bacteria.And there are concerns that the practice of washing fresh produce in chlorine, to sanitise it, is not effective to kill off the harmful bacteria.


Meet David Acheson - Your stomach's best friend From The Washington Post:

"Spinach picked on Monday is at the processor by Wednesday. It's in the consumer's hands by the following Monday and making them sick three days later. And it's in 40 states," he said. "That's quite daunting in terms of how do you get a handle on that. You don't know what's going on. You don't know if it's a deliberate attack, whether it's coming out of one small field in California or through a processor."
The steep rise in imports, driven in part by U.S. consumers' year-round demand for all kinds of food, complicates matters enormously and may drive the FDA to ask Congress for limited extra authority, Acheson said. But, given the huge array of foods that the FDA regulates, "it would take forever to inspect everything," he said. "You would burn so much money for nothing. It wouldn't buy you any fewer outbreaks or any less illness. It would just buy you a bunch of headaches."
Rather, he said, the FDA needs to focus on the foods and countries that pose the biggest risks, including the newest global players.

Amendments to China's food safety standards completed From China Daily China has made changes to 1,817 national standards for edible agricultural products and processed foods, and abolished 208 standards. Meanwhile, 2,588 standards set by the food industry, 6,949 standards established by local governments, as well as over 140,000 enterprise standards have been amended, according to Liu pingjun, head of the SAC.