DeLauro statement and Consumers Union pile on: What about test and hold?

You knew this was coming, of course:

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) issued the following statement about the recall of spinach because of Salmonella contamination. DeLauro serves as chairwoman of the Agriculture – Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee.

“In what can only be described as disturbing irony, the one year anniversary of the spinach recall that claimed three people and sickened hundreds more, is observed with yet another recall of potentially contaminated spinach, this time with Salmonella.

“Earlier this year when the Food and Drug Administration submitted a plan to strengthen guidelines for fresh cut produce, the Department of Health and Human Services rejected it. This latest spinach recall is a reminder that the FDA should immediately move forward to create a system for the produce industry that focuses on preventing hazards by applying science based controls, from raw material to finished product.

“It is time for the FDA to renew their commitment to their mission of protecting the public health, and make a declarative statement that the goal is to prevent food-borne illness not just to react when outbreaks occur. Until then, unfortunately for the American people, an opportunity missed for the FDA, leaves the public holding the bag.”


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From Consumers Union:

“It’s been one year since the E. Coli spinach recall and we have yet another serious incident. Eight thousand cartons left the plant for distribution in the U.S. That’s 8,000 too many. There needs to be a hold and test policy that prevents food from ever leaving the plant. There’s also a glaring need for across-the-board improvements to the FDA to enable its staff to do more routine inspections with the full authority to recall contaminated vegetables. At this point, we’re relying on the leafy green industry to essentially police itself,” said Jean Halloran, a Consumers Union food safety expert.



TK: Does there need to be a hold and test policy in place? I asked that question in the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group and got this thoughtful response from Alex Coles, director of Supply Chain Food Safety:

Ah... the eternal question. There are several trains of thought on this: We all know you can't test safety into a product. We have heard about the difficulties of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. "Then we should use statistical sampling to find it" they say. Unfortunately, statistical sampling is most useful when the contamination is distributed equally throughout the lot you are testing. That is not to say it will not find it, but the chances of finding it are extremely low. I don't have my chart for probability of detection in front of me, but to get a 99% confidence level of finding contamination at 0.1%, one would need to test over 600 samples. It could be done...
Let's look at testing turn around time. Unless you have a lab onsite, capable of testing pathogens, you need to add a day right off the bat for transportation. Standard methods take several days to return results; usually 3 days for a negative response up to 5 or 6 days for confirmation. It could take a full week to get results. With such a short shelf life, are our customers willing to received product that is 5-6 days old? Probably not.
With that being said, there are companies that are testing raw materials and finished products and stopping things at their door. For years, testing companies have been working on improving rapid method testing however the faster you try to go, the less reliable your answers could be. How fast is too fast? We are after all, trying to enrich and recover living organisms including those that are simply "injured" by the process.
This is a very difficult situation for all of us - growers, processors and customers alike. We don't have a good answer and we test as often as possible using the best information out there. More focus should be put on intervention to reduce the chances the product is contaminated to start with. Testing of the system, not the product, is a better solution.