Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Monday, February 2, 2009

Crushed peanuts

The salmonella outbreak linked to peanuts may be the event that finally gives food safety reform real traction. President Obama has called for a review of the FDA today, while members of Congress are also chiming in. From the desk of Sen. Tom Harkin:

Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, today announced a hearing “Examination of Federal Food Safety Oversight in the Wake of Peanut Products Recall.” The committee will meet in open session at 10:00 AM on Thursday, February 5, 2009 in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building.


Meanwhile, from Consumers Union today:

President Obama’s call today for a top-to-bottom review of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is good news for consumers, according to Consumers Union (CU), the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. CU said the recall of two years’ worth of production from a peanut butter factory in Georgia underlines critical weaknesses in the FDA’s inspection and enforcement capacity. CU called on Congress to require FDA to inspect such factories annually.

"The FDA is supposed to be a watchdog for consumers, and for too long, this agency has been coming up short,” said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers Union. “The FDA has been so severely weakened by cutbacks in staffing and funding, and is so poorly equipped to deal with today’s food industry, with its mass production and distribution systems and global sourcing of ingredients, that it can no longer keep food safe. The first step in overhauling the FDA should be requiring that processing plants are inspected every year,” said Halloran.

“President Obama’s review and his appointment of a new FDA Commissioner will definitely improve FDA’s use of its existing resources and authority. However, Congress must also act soon to modernize the agency and give it the additional resources and authority it desperately needs,” Halloran said.

“FDA was almost completely unaware of the problems at Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), despite the fact that problems had existed for some time, and that salmonella contaminated peanut butter at another Georgia factory just two years ago,” Halloran added. “Unfortunately, this is not surprising. FDA inspects U.S. food production facilities only about once every ten years on average.”

A recent CU poll found that two-thirds of Americans want the FDA to inspect domestic and foreign food-processing facilities at least once a month.

FDA last visited PCA’s plant in 2001, at which time PCA was only roasting peanuts. FDA admitted on January 30 that it did not even know the plant had started making peanut butter until 2008, when some of its output was turned back at the Canadian border because it contained metal fragments. As a result, FDA failed to inspect the PCA plant until January 2009, even though it had inspected other producers in the wake of the 2007 Georgia ConAgra salmonella peanut butter disease outbreak.

“Oversight of PCA was contracted out to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, which conducted a number of inspections. But there is little evidence that FDA was aware of repeated findings of unsanitary conditions at the plant,” Halloran stated.

CU said more basic reform will require Congressional action. “Congress should require FDA to inspect every food producer in the United States at least once a year, and provide funding through registration fees for this work,” said Halloran. “Congress must give FDA mandatory recall authority, and require companies to disclose the retail stores, schools and nursing homes that get recalled products. And if a company finds an adulterant like salmonella in its own testing, Congress should require that it inform FDA and explain how it disposed of the product,” Halloran added.

Prompted by the 8 deaths and more than 500 illnesses attributed to salmonella in peanut butter produced by PCA, and by the fact that the company apparently shipped product that it knew to be contaminated, Congress has begun considering FDA reform legislation. Representatives John Dingell, Bart Stupak, and Frank Pallone introduced a bill on January 28, and Representative Rosa DeLauro is expected to introduce another bill this week. Senator Durbin is also developing a bill expected to be introduced soon.

CU advises consumers not to eat products containing peanut ingredients like crackers or cookies, unless consumers check with the manufacturer and make sure that none of it comes from PCA.

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Kansas City produce promotions - Feb. 4 to Feb. 10





Food ad circulars this week in suburban Kansas City followed the value theme closely, with a splash of Valentine red. Hen House featured front page treatment of whole chickens (Save Money! Buy a whole chicken and learn how to cut it up yourself!) boneless beef chuck roast, 5-lb bag of Idaho russet potatoes at 2 for $4 and Chilean grapes for $1.18 per pound.

Price Chopper featured country style pork for 99 cents per pound and canned vegetables for prices at 49 cents each (store label). California Cuties clementines received front page treatment at $4.99 per five-lb box.

Hy-Vee's three day ad (Feb. 5-7 featured Tony's pizza at $1.99 each, beef brisket at $2.48 per pound, and fresh blueberries at $1.68 per6-ounce package, amid other deals for cereal and detergent.

Hy-Vee's Feb. 4-10 ad featured strawberries on the lead page and other deals for citrus, tomatoes, melons and salad inside.

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Mushroom recall - links

Here are some Web links to the mushroom recall this morning:

Phillips Farms news release

foxnews - Mushrooms recalled due to possible listeria contamination

philly.com - Chesco mushroom farm announces recall of enokis


Lawyersandsettlements.com - Mushrroms, potential risk for listeria


cnn.com - Enoki mushrooms from Phillips Farms recalled

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The bugs of war - ecoterrorism and other top headlines

The Times of London splashes with a Drudge-featured article this morning about the bugs of war, and potential use of pests in agro-terror. From the piece, by Jeffrey A. Lockwood is the author of Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War (OUP). Educated as an entomologist, he is a professor of philosophy and creative writing at the University of Wyoming:

The terrorists' letter arrived at the Mayor of Los Angeles's office on November 30, 1989. A group calling itself “the Breeders” claimed to have released the Mediterranean fruit fly in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and threatened to expand their attack to the San Joaquin Valley, an important centre of Californian agriculture.

With perverse logic, they said that unless the Government stopped using pesticides they would assure a cataclysmic infestation that would lead to the quarantining of California produce, costing 132,000 jobs and $13.4 billion in lost trade.

The infestation was real enough. It was ended by heavy spraying. It is still not known if ecoterrorists were behind it, but the panic it engendered shows that “the Breeders” were flirting with a powerful weapon.

The history and future of insects as weapons are explored in my new book, Six-Legged Soldiers. As an entomologist, I was initially interested in how human beings have conscripted insects and twisted science for use in war, terrorism and torture. It soon became apparent that the weaponisation of insects was not some quirky military footnote but a recurring theme in human strife, and quite possibly the next chapter in modern conflicts.

Insects are one of the cheapest and most destructive weapons available to terrorists today, and one of the most widely ignored: they are easy to sneak across borders, reproduce quickly and can spread disease and destroy crops with devastating speed.

A great strategic lesson of 9/11 has been overlooked. Terrorists need only a little ingenuity, not sophisticated weapons, to cause enormous damage. Armed only with box-cutters, terrorists hijacked aircraft and brought down the World Trade Centre. Insects are the box-cutters of biological warfare - cheap, simple and wickedly effective.

Am I being an alarmist? I wish I knew.

TK: Conventional pest challenges are scary enough without layering in the threat of terrorism. May diligence and our plant health defense prevail...

Other headlines snatched from the Web:

On the trail of tainted food
From Newsday and Caroline Smith Dewaal

The company ignored 12 positive test results in a two-year period showing the presence of salmonella. Instead of stopping production and thoroughly cleaning, Peanut Corp. continued to ship its products to market when retests did not confirm the findings. The Food and Drug Administration hadn't inspected the plant in eight years. It's particularly troubling that the FDA didn't seek either the company's records or the Georgia inspection reports - information that might have prevented the outbreak from occurring - even after it found that some of the products had been rejected by a firm in Canada.

Putnam to run for Florida agriculture commissioner From the AP

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, who quickly rose to power in Congress after being elected as a 26-year-old, said Sunday he will run for Florida agriculture commissioner.

Putnam will file paperwork to officially enter the race on Monday, he told The Associated Press. Putnam will serve out his final two years in Congress.

"Agriculture is in my DNA," Putnam said. "It's my professional background, it's my academic background, it's what my family is involved in to this day."

Downturn diet Consumer Reports chimes in on the food budget. A couple of their misguided missives:

Buy in season:
That means no strawberries in December in Maine, when you'll pay for shipping from some far-off warm place. Seasonal picks include cherries, melon, peaches, tomatoes, and peppers in summer; snow peas, spinach, and strawberries in spring; and carrots, cauliflower, citrus fruits, and cranberries in fall. For a list, click on "Save at the Supermarket" from the August/September 2008 issue of our ShopSmart magazine, free at www.ShopSmartMag.org.

For produce, go frozen
Frozen fruits and vegetables, often flash-frozen soon after picking, can be more nutritious than "fresh" items that have sat on store shelves for a while. And you don't have to worry about the frozen variety spoiling before it's eaten.


TK: It is always in season somewhere, and the idea that consumers should "shop in-season" is one the great farces perpetrated on the American consumer. If consumers see Chilean grapes on sale for $1.18 per pound, they should by all means purchase the grapes. Also, there is not a love for Wal-Mart or hard discounters like Aldi in these stretch your budget stories; instead it is advice urging consumers to shop local and support CSAs. Come now, there may be reasons to shop local and join a CSA, but to foist this advice as a "downturn diet" is a disservice to the downtrodden.

Beetle could post threat to Florida avocado industry

The redbay ambrosia beetle, which was first detected in Georgia in 2002 and has been moving its way southward to Florida, could be a threat to Florida’s avocado industry, and to homeowners who have the trees in their yards.

Super Bowl success: Mexican avocados

Australia and climate change
Is heat wave evidence of pending implosion?

Dole to sell 1,000 acres in California Coverage from The Packer

GM potatoes will be used by Scottish farmers within 10 years
Biotechnology needed to help control blight since Europe is removing some pesticide options

APEAM's marketing surge pays off big Coverage from The Packer


Child protection services should be called in for some obesity cases, say some

"What we are saying is that we need to start having some options because we get to a stage where our options are running out and we are not able to help these families for whatever reasons - either the parents are unable or unwilling to follow the advice from the weight management program."

Bird flu in China claims another victim


Climate change may shuffle Western weeds

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