Looking for answers

David Mitchell of The Packer passes on this news release from Rep. Dingell of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Reps. John D. Dingell (D-MI), Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and Bart Stupak, Chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent a letter of inquiry today to 49 large food processing firms regarding their history of recalls, food safety alerts and all instances of known chemical or microbiological contamination of their products since January 1, 2000. These requests are part of an effort by the Committee to determine the source of safety threats to the American food supply.

“We are asking the largest food providers how often they have identified contamination by chemicals such as mercury and microorganisms such as E. coli and salmonella during their quality control testing procedures,” said Dingell. “We know from the Peter Pan peanut butter case and others that internal testing by food processors often fails to detect contaminants. Now we want to know what exactly is reported to the FDA or state public health authorities when companies actually find dangerous chemicals and bacteria in our food.”

Last week the Committee sent letters to private testing labs to determine the extent of adulterated imported food. This food may have found its way to American grocery stores as a result of food import firms hiding from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lab results that show food to be unsafe. The Committee has been conducting an intensive investigation of the safety of the food supply that has resulted in six congressional hearings and has involved the gathering of information from both the FDA and private firms.

TK: Additionally, here is a link to a list of recalls in the past 16 months, also passed along by David.