Irradiation: the opposition

The Fresh Talk poll this week was solidly in support of irradiation. But a check of the consumer press headlines reveals the issue is fairly divisive. Here is an excerpt of edit against irradiation in the SF Chronicle:

Irradiation isn't just expensive and unwieldly, it's a distraction from what we really need to be doing to secure the food supply. Beefing up the FDA's regulation team, for instance, would do a world of good when it comes to catching the next outbreak before it spreads too far. It's also time to start encouraging farming methods that won't encourage contamination. The 2006 spinach recall, for instance, was due to infected cattle feces that had tainted the local water supply. The cattle operation was located far too close to the produce operation. It's as simple as that.

Escalating food prices and escalating instances of food-borne illness should have woken the FDA up to the fragility of our food system. Unfortunately, they're still pushing policies that are safe for business but not for the rest of us.

TK: On the other hand, some readers have chimed in to voice support. The Montreal Gazette opinion piece is called "Irradiation is the answer." From that piece:

Augmented use of irradiation technology, used in conjunction with other handling and processing safeguards, would go a long way to preventing future contamination of our food by E. coli, salmonella, and listeria bacteria.

It is a practice endorsed by the World Health Organization. Rational debate on this topic has been undermined by the popular but utterly false belief that foods thus treated become radioactive. Isn't it time to give health-conscious consumers a choice? Personally, if irradiated food is safe enough for NASA astronauts, it's good enough for me.

Michael Wiener

More irradiation headlines:

Would you buy irradiated spinach or lettuce?

Fear not: salmonella outbreak shows benefits or irradiation

TK: For me, it is not a question of whether I would buy irradiated spinach or lettuce, it is whether I would pay the premium demanded for irradiated spinach or lettuce. Probably not....

FDA on irradiation

Here is the official Aug. 21 announcement from the FDA on irradiation for spinach and lettuce:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a final rule today amending the food additive regulations to provide for the safe use of ionizing radiation for the control of foodborne pathogens and extension of shelf-life in fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach. FDA has determined that this use of ionizing radiation will not adversely affect the safety of the food.

This final rule is a partial response to a food additive petition (FAP 9M4697) that had been filed by The National Food Processors Association (now the Grocery Manufacturers' Association) on behalf of The Food Irradiation Coalition. In 2007, the petitioner requested a response to a part of the original scope of the petition while the remainder would remain under review. Specifically, the petitioner requested a response to amend the food additive regulations to provide for the safe use of ionizing radiation for the control of food-borne pathogens and extension of shelf-life in fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach up to a maximum absorbed dose of 4.0 kilogray (kGy).

This final rule will permit the irradiation of fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach to a maximum absorbed dose of 4.0 kGy, which is effective in reducing microbial pathogens that have been associated with these crops in the past.

There will be a 30-day period for submitting objections or a request for a hearing to Docket No. FDA-1999-F-2405] (formerly 1999F-5522). Electronic objections may be submitted to the Federal eRulemaking Portal athttp://www.regulations.gov [ http://www.regulations.gov/ ] or written submissions may be sent to the Dockets Management Branch (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.

Additional information regarding the final rule is available by contacting Dr. Lane A. Highbarger, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (HFS-255), Food and Drug Administration, 5100 Paint Branch Pkwy., College Park, MD 20740, 301-436-1204.

________________________________________________________________________

Questions and Answers about Final Rule on Irradiation of Fresh Iceberg Lettuce and Fresh Spinach [http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/irradlet.html ] August 21, 2008

Marler lawsuit

TK: I received this email recently from food safety lawyer Bill Marler, who commented on a recent post about peppers and also brought news of a lawsuit related to a foodborne illness outbreak in the Northwest. The salmonella investigation the FDA has been running related to peppers and tomatoes arguably took some spotlight and investigative resources from E. coli outbreak in the Northwest. Now this from Marler:



Thanks for noticing my Pepper Post. Here is something you might be interested in too:

Student sickened by E. coli-Tainted Lettuce files Suit

A victim of the June 2008 lettuce E. coli outbreak in Thurston and Pierce counties filed suit today in the Superior Court of Washington, King County. Heather Whybrew of Federal Way, Washington was a student at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland when she was infected with E. coli O157:H7. The lawsuit was filed against Northwest Fruit and Produce Inc and “John Does,” Growers, Shippers and Suppliers by attorney William Marler and Marler Clark, a Seattle law firm dedicated to representing victims of foodborne illness.

Ten people were sickened in the outbreak, which was traced to bagged, commercial romaine lettuce manufactured and distributed by Northwest Produce to food service locations including Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). Ms. Whybrew fell ill on May 16, after taking all of her meals at PLU. She experienced cramping, nausea, and diarrhea, which became bloody the next day. In extreme pain, she went to the school health center, and was told to go to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital in Federal Way, Washington where she tested positive for E. coli O157:H7. Ms. Whybrew battled the E. coli infection over the next week, developing pneumonia as well as blood clots in her extremities and IV insertion sites, for which she required Heparin, a blood thinner. When kidney irregularities emerged, she was transferred to Children’s Hospital in Seattle, where she remained until June 6. She was hospitalized for 20 days. She continues to recover from the infection and its complications—she must give herself two Heparin shots daily in the abdomen to keep blood clots at bay.

“Leafy greens from California are the sleeping giant,” said Whybrew’s attorney William Marler. Once E. coli O157:H7 gets on—or into—the product, it is almost impossible to wash off. A tiny number of bacteria can sicken or even kill. Positive changes were made after the terrible spinach E coli O157:H7 outbreak in 2006, but this outbreak and others indicate that there are still problems in the system. Salinas, California is again suspected as being the source of the lettuce that sickened Heather and nine others, and that is where regulation is the tightest. There’s clearly a great deal of work still to do.”

“I have a very high tolerance for pain,” said Ms. Whybrew in a statement. “I have experienced sports injuries, undergone reconstructive surgery, and have had a crainiotomy to remove a brain tumor. I have had chemo and a difficult rehab from partial paralysis—but I have never experienced anything like the pain from E. coli O157:H7 infection.”

E. coli O157:H7 is often contracted by consuming food or beverage that has been contaminated by animal (especially cattle) manure. The majority of food borne E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks has been traced to contaminated ground beef; however leafy vegetables that have been contaminated in fields or during processing have been increasingly identified as the source of outbreaks.

William D. Marler, Esq.
Marler Clark LLP PS
Seattle, Washington 98104

Irradiation's new era

Posting here from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago......

As we listen to the overview of the U.S. apple crop this afternoon at the U.S. Apple Outlook and Marketing Conference, I noted that one of the members of the Fresh Produce Discussion Group posted the AP story about the FDA's decision about irradiation and produce safety. From the story, we find the the FDA's decision will be effective Friday.

This is big news, and it's an issue that the FDA has been working on for quite some time. Still, it is difficult to believe the commercial use of irradiation for spinach and lettuce will find instant demand. It may be a niche technology for sales to operators who cater to customers with compromised immune systems, perhaps. It will be interesting to see what industry reaction to this move by FDA will be.

Andy's take: tomato warnings justified

The Sacramento Bee ran this comment from Andrew von Eschenback in response to the paper's July 21 editorial. Yes, as you guessed it, the FDA continues to stand by its earlier tomato warnings. In other words, don't expect the agency's response to change about their past actions and you won't be disappointed. From the Bee:




Andrew C. von Eschenbach, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, is responding to July21 editorial "Killer tomatoes? Or ... / Illness, dumped produce reveal a problem."


The Bee incorrectly states in its editorial that the Food and Drug Administration "reconsidered its warning" to avoid several types of tomatoes during the food borne illness emergency involving Salmonella Saintpaul. We did not reconsider. We explicitly lifted the warning, based upon evidence uncovered during our ongoing investigation.
The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both part of Health and Human Services, have collaborated with state, local and international partners in a weeks-long investigation into the nation's largest outbreak of salmonella infections.
State-of-the-art methods of investigation revealed a strong association between eating raw tomatoes and illnesses reported early in this outbreak.
Based on that information and using the same process employed during emergencies involving spinach in 2006 and peanut butter in 2007, the FDA made recommendations necessary to protect public health.
A food-borne illness investigation is a lot like a detective trying to solve a case. We often must rely on people's memory about what they ate last week,or the week before that, or the week before that. We compare information from those who got sick with information from people who didn't. This process often produces suspects, or leads.In this case, eating raw tomatoes was strongly associated with cases of illness.
The FDA and CDC recently broadened the investigation and warnings to new leads. A nationwide study found that ill people were likely to have eaten raw jalapeño and serrano peppers in addition to raw tomatoes.
Data from all investigations indicate that raw jalapeño peppers from Mexico are likely to be a major cause of the disease outbreak. Raw serrano peppers and raw tomatoes remain under investigation.
On July 17,the FDA lifted its warning on raw tomatoes, saying that the tomatoes now available in the domestic market were not grown in areas associated with the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak. The tomatoes available today are from different sources than those available at the beginning of the outbreak, and the science supports the change in our warning.
At every point of this investigation, the FDA has followed the science, weighed the risk to public health, issued - and lifted - warnings based on solid, scientific evidence to promote and protect the public health

Drawing distinctions: FAA and FDA

I was reading the Perishable Pundit today and one particular subset of today's report caught my eye. Jim compared the risk of airline accidents and car safety ratings to the incidence of foodborne illness. He made a case that the FDA should revise its policy of issuing food advisories, drawing on the example of the Federal Aviation Administration:

What the FAA does not do is go around issuing recommendations as to whether .018 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures is something an individual should accept or not.

A serious foodborne illness caused by fresh produce is an exceedingly rare event. This means that it is very difficult to increase an individual’s personal safety through a consumption restriction on fresh produce. Look at the numbers for this very large and serious outbreak related to Salmonella Saintpaul.

TK: I suggest you check out Jim's reasoning further if you would like. Here, he speaks to the crux of the matter:

As such, FDA should abandon this policy of making these broad recommendations not to consume. Instead, as with the NHTSA, FDA should publicize what information it has, being careful, of course, to put it in perspective.

There are two separate problems that Congress will be dealing with: The first is how to improve food safety on fresh produce — for that we have recommended a certification program to ensure farms operate to a gold standard. The second is how FDA should conduct itself to enhance public health without bankrupting industries so they can’t afford to invest in food safety.

The answer is for Congress to direct FDA to function in an educational fashion on foodborne illness outbreaks unless there is a particular reason to fear high numbers of fatalities or permanent damage.

This preserves the interests public health authorities have in disseminating important information, it helps avoid panic among consumers by putting information in perspective, and it avoids a disastrous impact on food producers by preserving consumer freedom.

TK: While Jim's argument is well-founded, I think his point is off base here. "The answer for Congress is to direct the FDA to function in an educational fashion on foodborne illness outbreaks unless there is a particular reason to fear high numbers of fatalities or permanent damage."

How can the FDA act in an "educational fashion"? Weaken advisories to "suggestions"? As it is, consumers have the free will to do what they will do, no matter what the government says.

If the FDA has information that might protect the public health, it needs to have the freedom to speak freely. The idea that Congress should "direct the FDA" to protect commerce above consumers would seem to me to have a chilling effect on agency vigilance and would be surely dispiriting to professionals dedicated to the protection of public health.

Yes, the outbreak has weakened the faith of the industry in the FDA. Better performance must be expected in future investigations. But the industry cannot callously accept outbreaks unless they bring "high numbers of fatalities or permanent damage."

At a time like this, we must remember the spinach outbreak and these words that Bryan Silbermann spoke: "Never again. Never, ever again."

By the way, here is a link to an interesting Web page about the origin and history of food regulations and the FDA.

When pushback comes to shove

There is a post on the Food Safe message board that talks of "industry pushback" relative to possible food safety reform, and particularly the idea that industry believes that traceback was not the problem in the outbreak investigation. From the board Roy wrote:


It does not take long for the spin doctors and lobbyists to go to work when Congress is considering mandating traceability. Of course traceback is critically important in an outbreak.


I followed on several comments on Roy's post by posting the column that Bryan Silbermann and Tom Stenzel co-wrote for this week's Packer. I noted that I don't see "pushback" in their words as much as a desire by industry leaders to have a say in how they are regulated. An excerpt from that opinion piece from Stenzel and Silbermann:



Long term, we all must accept the reality that our industry's days of "business as usual" are over. After the spinach outbreak in 2006, some said we were just one big outbreak away from mandatory food safety laws being passed by Congress. And now, that outbreak is here. In part because of its flaws, some very important stakeholders -- legislators, regulators and consumers -- have found our food safety efforts to be lacking and are demanding change. Thunder can already be heard from Capitol Hill to FDA headquarters. Hearings are being scheduled, bills are being introduced, regulations are being drafted. Meanwhile, consumers are showing their displeasure with their wallets. The Food Marketing Institute reports that 84% of surveyed consumers said they stopped buying some produce in 2007. While food safety brings added costs to our business, losing consumers is a cost none of us can bear. Our industry's key focus now should be to exert as much control as possible over our destiny moving forward. We are, after all, in the best position to lead the task at hand.


You want industry pushback? As one industry leader told me in a recent email about upcoming Congressional hearings....

"Still...the type of guy that needs to be heard is the shipper's salesman who had every load in gas room inventory sold on June 4, didn't pick after that date, then had them all given back to them by the 9th, and they rotted in the room.

Or the repacker who had (operators) empty their houses in reverse, sending every tomato they had back to the guy that sold it to them. In effect, 'take these back or we'll never do business again'.

Tomato compensation and searching for the jalapeno king

It is going to be tough to set a dollar amount on the damages incurred by the tomato industry as a result of the salmonella outbreak advisories. Factors such as acreage and weather conditions play into the level of shipments and the market price. One would assume that figures will be put forward in next week's Congressional hearings that attempt to estimate the cost. In fact, here is an AP video on the compensation issues can be found:






Further, here is a press release from Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida about legislation he has already introduced to address the problem:

Following the Food & Drug Administration's (FDA) announcement that tomatoes were not the likely source of a recent salmonella outbreak, Congressman Tim Mahoney (FL-16) has introduced a bill, H.R. 6581, to compensate tomato growers and packers nationwide for their losses due to the salmonella scare, which according to the Florida Tomato Exchange's estimates could be close to $100 million.
Congressman Mahoney, who is Florida's only representative on the House Agriculture Committee, also called on the Committee to hold field hearings in his district to examine what reforms are needed to ensure food safety. The Agriculture Committee plans to schedule a hearing in mid-September.
"The FDA's warnings about tomatoes devastated the $1.3 billion tomato industry. Due to the timing of the salmonella outbreak, Florida was hit hard. We need to ensure that all impacted tomato growers and packers are compensated for their losses to protect domestic food production," said Congressman Mahoney. "With unfortunate events like this, Americans are becoming aware that food safety and national security are synonymous. We clearly need to examine and overhaul our food safety system to ensure that the food we grow and import is safe."
In April, the FDA issued a nationwide warning that tomatoes were a possible source of a salmonella outbreak that made 1,220 people ill in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. After a long investigation, the FDA recently determined that fresh tomatoes now available in the domestic market are not associated with the current outbreak and the agency has rescinded its warning against eating certain types of red raw tomatoes.
The Mahoney Bill, which is also cosponsored by U.S. Representatives Allen Boyd, Adam Putnam, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Vern Buchanan, directs the Secretary of Agriculture to make payments to tomato growers and first handlers that were unable to market tomato crops as a result of the Food and Drug Administration's Public Health Advisory issued in June 2008 due to the salmonella outbreak. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will be responsible for issuing regulations and determining eligibility for compensation, as they have in other disaster programs.
"The tomato industry in our state has unfairly suffered enough," Rep. Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) said. "The FDA must reform their trace-back programs so that growers and consumers do not have to go through the same nightmare during future outbreaks."


TK: Don't expect smooth sailing for the bill. In this coverage of Mahoney's bill, the WSJ reported that consumer groups had some "pushback" on the issue.

Consumer advocates oppose the bill. Sarah Klein, a staff attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the food-industry lobby over the years has weakened federal food-safety oversight, and consumers shouldn't foot the bill now. "We'd like to see the industry focusing on how to prevent these outbreaks for the future to protect consumers and their bottom line," she said.
Tom Stenzel, president of United Fresh Produce Association, said the fresh-produce industry has sought tougher FDA regulation of tomatoes and other items. In recent years, Florida tomato growers and California leafy-green growers pushed through tougher measures in their own states, including mandatory inspections and training.
But the industry disagrees on who should benefit from the bill. Mr. Mahoney said it covers farmers and shippers, which were hit the hardest by the FDA warning. Mr. Stenzel, said it also should cover those further up the supply chain, such as packers and repackers, who suffered damages, too.
It is uncertain whether the bill will pass Congress. There isn't similar legislation in the Senate, and there is little time for lawmakers to act before the November election. Last year, spinach growers unsuccessfully pushed a similar measure to compensate for losses after the government's 2006 recall of fresh spinach after an outbreak of E. coli.







Meanwhile, Luis provided this post at the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group, adding some perspective as to the size and scope of the jalapeno production and exports to the U.S.:



Exports, most of them to the United States, have risen between 10 and 15 percent every year over the last decade and now over 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of peppers are grown in Mexico, 80 percent of them jalapenos.
Dozens of varieties of chiles, some which provoke sweating and crying, have become a cooking trend in the United States. Food writer and spice expert Dave DeWitt describes the fad as "culinary bungee jumping."
"Very rarely do you ever hear someone say, 'I used to eat hot and spicy food but now I'm back to bland,'" said DeWitt, the author of over 30 books on chiles like "The Spicy Food Lover's Bible" and "The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia."
Inspectors are holding up truck loads of the some 100 tons of peppers crossing into the United States from Mexico every day, raising the risk of produce being left to rot before it reaches stores, Gochicoa said.

TK: Gary Lucier of the USDA Economic Research reports that imports of fresh chili peppers from Mexico during the first four months of the year - assumed to be mostly jalapenos - were up 25% compared with the same period a year ago. Shipments through the first four months of the year translated to about one pound of fresh chili peppers per person in the U.S.


Developing...I'm on the scout for a few shippers of fresh jalapenos for a market update...If there is a "jalapeno king," I will find him....

Produce in Europe may get ugly

Government regulation is often a curious thing. (OK, maybe that's a nice way of putting it.)

Case in point: Proposed changes to European Union vegetable grading are raising the ire of French, Italian and Spanish produce interests. From the Web site EuropeanVoice.com:

"From artichokes to watermelons, the EU has a whole raft of legislation governing how fruits and vegetables should appear from the outside. Never mind if they are more tasty, vegetables that are too long or too knobbly, slightly misshapen or blemished are, under current rules, consigned to the EU’s food dustbin. But the European Commission, conscious of the food shortages around the world and of rising prices in Europe, has now decided to edit the rulebook on fruit and vegetable and cut back on waste."

"The Commission is proposing to relax rules on 26 different types of fruit and vegetable, including Brussels sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, mushrooms, plums, spinach and walnuts, allowing under-sized or misshapen products onto supermarket shelves. They would, though, need to be labelled as “products intended for processing”.

"The proposals, if backed by EU member states, would mean that Europeans could soon be shopping for forked carrots, strings of onion with fewer than the until now mandatory 16 onions, bent cucumbers and green asparagus that are actually 50% white. Consumers should use these sub-standard products for cooking, salads or jams, the Commission advised."

France, Italy and Spain maintain the current regulations protect consumers from poor quality produce, the article states, adding that regulators are confident changes will be finalized by year's end.

Of course, because it's government work, there's a loophole:

"In a bid to sweeten the pill of reform, the Commission has said standards will remain for some fruit and vegetables: kiwis will still have to measure a specific diameter, and a bunch of table grapes will still not weigh more than one kilogram."

Cutting regulatory red tape is a serious issue to European produce firms and ultimately the public, but the issue conjures images of poker-faced men in in lab coats placing calipers around kiwifruit. Here's hoping business and consumers both benefit from the changes.

Fruit or vegetable?

Tomato -- fruit or vegetable? Who among us hasn't been at a dinner party or other gathering at one time or another and had this question spur a heated debate?

A post at http://www.livescience.com/health/080722-fruit-what-is.html helps clear up the issue:

" ... in the world of botany, a fruit is the structure that bears the seeds of a plant. It is formed in the plant's flower. In the center, the female parts of the flower include the ovary. The ovary has structures inside that become the seeds when fertilized. So the ovary will develop into the fruit. To the plant, fruits are basically a means of spreading the seeds around, generally by wind or animal poop. In the latter case, fruits such as raspberries become thicker and accumulate sugars and bright colors, thereby attracting birds or other animals ..."

Tomatoes, for the record, are technically a fruit.


But don't expect to find a bunch of tomato farmers at the next fruit growers co-op meeting.

What about vegetables? According to Livescience:

"The term vegetable has no meaning in botany ... . Instead, the other produce is also classified, like the fruits, by whatever part of the plant they are. For example, rhubarb and celery are the stems, albeit very enlarged and juicy stems, of a leaf. Lettuce, kale, spinach and cabbage are the leaves of a plant."

As far as public perception goes, I'm guessing people generally think of fruit as produce that is sweet and vegetables as those commodities that are not -- a fairly accurate shortcut.

Fresh Express Fresh Produce Safety Conference

Check out the Fresh Talk calendar at the bottom of the page for info on the Fresh Express Fresh Produce Safety Conference, to be held Sept. 11 in Monterey. Sounds like this show will pack a punch for a modest fee. From an email from Barbara Hines of Fresh Express:

You may recall that Fresh Express was first to commit funds for critically needed E. coli research through a broad initiative and funds of $2 million. And, while other organizations are still defining their research, the Fresh Express initiative has already yielded important findings that Fresh Express IS SHARING WITH INDUSTRY. Everyone will have the opportunity to hear the results/findings at the same time and place

Here is background on the research priorities identified by Fresh Express, from the email from Barbara:

Research Priority Areas Summary
Five research priorities were identified for funding by the voluntary Fresh Express Scientific Advisory Panel. Each research project was expected to address one or more of these priorities. Of the 65 proposals received, nine research projects were selected independently by the Fresh Express Scientific Advisory Panel, totaling $2 million dollars. The research priorities are:
1. Determine the potential for the internalization of Escherichia coli O157:H7 into lettuce and/or tissue spinach during the growth of plants and their subsequent harvesting, cooling, processing and transport/distribution. This work should include the consideration of factors affecting internalization as a function of plant varieties, plant age, growing conditions, plant variety, growing season, method of harvest, etc;
2. Identify new mitigation strategies and technologies or significant improvements in existing technologies for improved intervention to reduce the levels/frequency of E. coli O157:H7 and other enteric pathogens both on and in fresh leafy green produce;

3. Conduct field studies to identify sources and vectors/vehicles for E. coli O157:H7 in the environment and factors that affect the degree and extent of contamination into the produce (particularly lettuce and spinach) field or processing locations. These studies should consider some or all of the following factors on the risk of contamination of ground-grown leafy green produce: the impact of production field flooding, water source (well, irrigation source) and method of water distribution (furrow, sprinkler or drip irrigation), the role of wild animals present in the fields and the presence of cattle and other agricultural animals in locations near production fields;
4. Determine the ability of E. coli 0157:H7 to multiply in the presence of normal background flora during transportation from harvest field to the cooler, while at the cooler, and during transportation either as finished packaged salads or cored product in a low oxygen, high carbon dioxide atmosphere, or in open 20 pound returnable plastic totes in temperature regimes commonly used, as well as, temperatures considered abusive; and
5. Determine the ability of E. coli O157:H7 and other enteric pathogens to survive composting processes, including those for “green compost” and leafy green field waste and potential for multiplication of the surviving pathogens in composted materials in the fields under optimal conditions.

The argument for a single food safety agency

A new GAO report looks at foodborne illness outbreaks from countries with a single food safety agency. From the office of Rep. Rosa DeLauro:


U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-3) today unveiled a Government Accountability Report (GAO) report examining foodborne illness outbreaks in countries with a single food safety agency. The report comes as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues a three-month investigation to determine whether tomatoes or jalapeños were the source of a salmonella outbreak, which sickened more than a thousand people . Durbin and DeLauro requested the report following a 2006 E. coli outbreak involving pre-packaged spinach (to view the request letter, please click here).

For two consecutive Congresses, Durbin and DeLauro have introduced The Safe Food Act (S. 654 and H.R. 1148 in the Senate and House respectively), which would consolidate all food safety activities into a single agency, responsible for the administration and enforcement of our food safety laws. Importantly, when enacted, it would create a national system for tracing food, point-of-origin to retail sale, which would have aided the investigation into the still unknown source of the current salmonella. Currently, there are at least 12 different federal agencies and 35 different laws governing food safety. With overlapping jurisdictions, federal agencies often lack accountability on food safety-related issues.

“This GAO report highlights how effectively a single food safety agency could protect our food supply. The findings in the report offer us in Congress important lessons on how to proceed with food safety reform legislation. Not only does the report outline the critical components that are necessary for an effective food safety system – traceback procedures, cooperative arrangements between public health officials, and mandatory recall authority – it also demonstrates that these measures can be implemented seamlessly under a system governed by a single food safety agency,” said DeLauro. “We must incorporate the philosophy used by the countries featured in the GAO report. By focusing on the entire food supply chain, placing primary responsibility for food safety on producers, and ensuring that food imports meet equivalent safety standards, only then could Congress adequately reform the U.S. food safety system.”

"Today's GAO report shows that America ranked eighth out of eight countries -- dead last -- in terms of national food safety systems. Why? The other countries studied have integrated food safety systems. Our practice of making piecemeal changes to outdated laws is simply ineffective," Durbin said. "I hope today's report serves as a wake-up call for the Administration and others in Congress. We need a thoughtful overhaul and reorganization of America’s food safety system. These changes don’t have to happen all at once. But they need to start now. "

Big deal or no big deal

Is the salmonella outbreak, which has sickened over 1,000 - and made many tomato handlers substantially poorer - a big deal? Here is an interesting take passed on by Doug Powell of the Food Safety Network from NextGov on comments by David Acheson.

As of today, nearly 1,000 people have been sickened, one person has died, and at least $150 million has been lost by tomato growers and sellers (and probably more now that peppers, onions and cilantro are becoming suspects) because of a salmonella outbreak as of yet unknown origin.

Not to worry, though. It isn’t a big deal.

To quote Dr. David Acheson, food safety chief of the Food and Drug Administration, “We’re a nation of 300 million people who eat two-to-three times a day. To have 800 people sick is not that big of a deal.”

OK, Acheson has a point: 1,000 out of 304,554,835 (according to theUS Census population clock as of this post) is only 3.2834809534381550698415278811778e-6 percent, if my fingers hit the calculator correctly. [Which they didn't the first time - it should be .00003% - which a sharp reader caught - see comments below.]

But that perspective leads, of course, to the question of what does the FDA believe is a BIG DEAL?

Is it 3,000 people sick? 100,000? Even a million is only a statistical blip.

Or how about deaths? About 5,500 people die every day in the United States. One person dying from salmonella over a couple months is not a Big Deal either to the FDA, I gather from Acheson’s comments.

So, exactly what is the level necessary for the sick or dying to be considered a Big Deal?

Of course, not only do we need to know what a Big Deal is in relation to a single event, but also from a multiple event perspective.

Over the last decade, there have been 13 salmonella outbreaks from tomatoes alone. And this count doesn’t include other food-borne problems, like E. coli or Hepatitis A. (Remember spinach and green onions?)

Once we know what FDA's Big Deal risk threshold is (and what's the Agriculture Department's as well for meats and dairy products -- remember Taco Bell?), we can then start to figure out the true cost/benefit to putting in a food tracing system that Allan Holmeswrote about.

In fact, we may find that we don’t even need an FDA, as the late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman argued.

When 1,000 people get sick and tiny tracking documents

Doug Powell of the Food Safety Network passes along this link to a New York Times editorial about - of course - the FDA and the salmonella outbreak. The industry may be weighed down with many new tasks because of this outbreak. From the piece:


The government officials who are supposed to protect America’s food supply are not certain what has made almost 1,000 people ill in the last three months. At first it was raw tomatoes that appeared to be tainted with a rare form of salmonella. So, consumers avoided tomatoes, and the tomato business suffered mightily. Health officials are still worried about tomatoes, but they’ve also raised concerns about jalapeño peppers. Or perhaps cilantro. Or maybe some brands of salsa. Somewhere. Meanwhile, people keep getting sick.
This failure is an urgent reminder that the country needs an effective system to track food from the farm to the table. If health officials could find tainted items and quickly trace them back to their tainted source, it would save consumers their health and businesses profits.
After last year’s problems with contaminated peanut butter, spinach and imported seafood, Congress and the White House pledged to take swift action to ensure the safety of the nation’s food.
Both houses of Congress are still working on food-safety bills, and the Food and Drug Administration — understaffed and ill equipped — unveiled a food-safety plan in November but has yet to implement it. There can be no more delay. The F.D.A. commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach, should use his emergency powers now to impose new rules to improve food safety.
Last week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Consumer Federation of America called on Dr. von Eschenbach to use his authority to require the food industry to put in place a detailed tracking system to follow produce from farm to fork. This is a good idea.
Some food producers already track their products. Others could add information to the stickers already on many fruits and vegetables to identify where they are grown and how they are distributed. Those stickers could act as tiny tracking documents allowing investigators to see quickly how the nation’s produce moves from field to final destination.
The consumer organizations also called for another promising idea — that each producer or processor create a detailed and written safety plan to help the F.D.A. identify and prevent such problems as contaminated water or lack of proper sanitation facilities for workers.
If the cluelessness about this latest salmonella outbreak offers one lesson, it is that health officials need to know exactly where the nation’s fruits and vegetables have been. And they need to know it before even more people fall ill.

CSPI, CFA: Emergency produce regs needed

If the tomato traceback investigation would have been solved in 10 days, we never would have seen this press release. As it is, the industry may well have to deal with new realities that only a month ago would have seemed far fetched. What's more, will "commodity specific" measures get lost in the rush? This news release from CSPI outlines the case for emergency produce traceability regulations. From the release:


Food safety and consumer watchdogs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Consumer Federation of America are today making an urgent plea to Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration: Protect Americans from unsafe food by implementing emergency regulations requiring traceability for produce. The groups say that if fruits and vegetables can be tracked back up through the supply chain back to the farm, investigators would have an easier time nailing down the source of outbreaks of Salmonella, E. coli, and other dangerous pathogens.
“Effective traceability labeling must encompass the multiple steps along the path from farm to table, including farm-of-origin, packer, distributor, and retailer,” the groups wrote in a letter to von Eschenbach. “Such a system should use a standardized code for all FDA-regulated items to streamline investigations and ensure effective record-keeping by all entities along the production chain.”
Major players in the produce business already know how to use the basic technology needed for traceability: little stickers on fruits and vegetables. The industry already has standard price look-up codes, or PLUs, that retailers can use at the register. Tomatoes that bear a sticker with the number 4087 are red Roma tomatoes, for instance. But similar standardized codes could let retailers, food safety investigators, or even curious consumers know exactly what farm a given bunch of asparagus or bag of spinach hails from.
“Each outbreak causes huge losses, both for the consumers who become severely ill and for the growers, who often can’t sell their products,” said CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal. “Unfortunately, as this investigation has dragged on, the produce industry is reaping what it sowed when it sought and received special exemptions that allowed the industry to avoid the country of origin labeling requirements Congress passed in 2002. While new requirements are scheduled to go into effect later this year, FDA needs to go beyond country of origin labeling and give public health officials the ability to trace produce from the fork back to the farm.”
Although the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control are casting a wider net to locate the food source responsible for the current Salmonella outbreak, CSPI says the public should still follow the FDA’s current advice which tomatoes to eat and which to avoid.
“If FDA had put a traceability system in place two years ago following the spinach outbreak, this current investigation might be moving more quickly,” said Chris Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America. “This latest outbreak demonstrates very clearly the need for the federal government to quickly and easily trace an implicated food to its source.”
The letter from CFA and CSPI also urges the agency to require growers and packers to implement written food safety plans, similar to the hazard control plans that have proved successful in reducing bacterial contamination of fresh meat and poultry. CSPI has been encouraging the FDA to require such plans since 2006.
“Traceability is essential to a 21st century food safety system,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Vice Chair Diana DeGette (D-CO). “It is possible to trace the origins of our foods. Most of our food products already have labels, many companies already know their suppliers, and the technology already exists. Unfortunately, we have a broken food safety system in this country that cannot determine the source of tainted foods while consumers continue to get sick. Traceability will allow us to quickly identify the source of contamination while protecting the American consumer and industry’s bottom-line.”
When distributors mix and match produce from different sources, a practice called “repacking” in the industry, they should be required to maintain the identifying marks or labels that would allow FDA to determine the origin, according to the food safety groups.
Since 1990, CSPI has tracked over 700 outbreaks of foodborne illness linked to produce items, including two dozen outbreaks linked to tomatoes that have caused more than 3,000 illnesses.
While 869 have been sickened in the current outbreak, foodborne illness is dramatically underreported, so the actual number of illnesses is likely many times higher. Today’s letter to von Eschenbach is signed by DeWaal, Waldrop, and CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson.

Western Growers: collateral damage cannot go unchallenged

To this point, Western Growers has taken the most forceful approach to the damage caused by FDA's meandering investigation. From Western Growers on June 28:

IRVINE, CA (June 28, 2008)- Western Growers is urging the House Committee on Agriculture to hold hearings as soon as possible on the salmonella outbreak that has been associated with fresh, red round, roma and plum tomatoes.

FDA and CDC have been unable to definitively determine the source or the cause of this outbreak and while these issues remain a "mystery," tomato growers across the nation are suffering irreparable harm.

"Congress must investigate this matter and determine ways to avoid this in the future and make the innocent tomato growers, packers and shippers whole" said Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers."

"FDA’s comments to the media earlier today do not leave us confident that a progressive narrowing of the investigation through a thorough trace back process is occurring. It is very possible that we may never know if tomatoes are the source or, if they are, where they were grown or processed or how they were contaminated.

"Our industry has taken dramatic steps to develop the strongest practices possible to prevent contamination in the field and throughout the supply chain. We have done this in close collaboration with public health authorities at the local and federal level. Now it is time to look at how FDA ‘intervenes’ in the event of an outbreak and how they ‘communicate’ with the public and industry to ensure that public health is protected without the irreparable destruction of agricultural economies.

"The collateral damage inflicted on thousands of innocent producers in this country by FDA blanket ‘advisories,’ such as with spinach and tomatoes cannot go unchallenged.

"We look forward to a positive response from the House Committee on Agriculture and to working with them to balance the important goals of protecting public health and agricultural economies," said Nassif.

Western Growers is an agricultural trade association whose members from Arizona and California grow, pack and ship ninety percent of the fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in California and seventy five percent of those commodities in Arizona. This totals about half of the nation’s fresh produce.

FDA: It would be irresponsible

The FDA's serpentine traceback investigation - and the industry's reaction to it - continues to be the top story in the fresh produce industry. The article below was linked by Doug Powell and the International Food Safety Network, from Health Day News:

With the number of people sickened in the nationwide salmonella outbreak now standing at 869, with 107 hospitalizations, U.S. officials acknowledged Tuesday that they were no closer to identifying the source of the contaminant.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also announced it was expanding its investigation to include food items normally served with tomatoes. While tomatoes are still the leading suspected source of the bacterial infections in the two-month-old outbreak, officials said they can't rule out other food items associated with tomatoes. But, they declined to say what those other foods might be.
"It would be irresponsible of us at this point to say where we are expanding the testing," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's associate commissioner for food protection. "I'm not prepared to discuss what those items might be."
"The tomato trail is not getting cold, rather other items are getting hotter," he added.
Acheson said the FDA has also activated the Food Emergency Response Network, which could bring to 100 the number of laboratories across the country working to identify the source of the outbreak. The network has been activated before, specifically during the spinach outbreak and the contaminated pet food outbreak in 2007.
Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of foodborne, bacterial and mycotic diseases division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said at the teleconference that his agency was conducting a multi-state investigation focusing on the 179 people who have fallen ill since June 1. He did not explain why the CDC was zeroing in on that group of people.
Meanwhile, the advice to consumers remains the same, Acheson said. Avoid raw red plum, red Roma, round red tomatoes, and products containing these raw tomatoes.
To date, infections have been reported in 36 states and the District of Columbia, making it the largest produce-linked salmonella outbreak in U.S. history. There have been no deaths, officials said.
Also Tuesday, the Bush administration's top health official expressed frustration that the salmonella outbreak hasn't been solved yet. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt asked Congress for more money and stronger legal powers for food import safety agencies, the Associated Press reported.
CDC officials first acknowledged on Friday that they were no longer sure that the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak was due to tomatoes alone, or some other food source.
"Whatever this produce item is that's causing illness is probably still out there making people sick," Dr. Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the CDC, told reporters late Friday at a special press teleconference.
Health officials have said all along that the bulk of the tomatoes available at the start of the outbreak in mid-April had come from Mexico and parts of Florida. The FDA had sent teams of investigators to Florida and Mexico last month to inspect farms, packing houses and distribution centers.
One factor complicating the search for the cause of the outbreak is a common food industry practice called "repacking."
"Repacking is a situation in which a supplier or a distributor will repack tomatoes to meet a specific customers' requests," Acheson explained. "So, if a customer is wanting small, ripe tomatoes and the supplier does not have a box of small ripe tomatoes, then they will typically go through multiple boxes and pull out ones that meet customers' specifications and repack them. It's a very, very common practice. We've seen reports that it may be as common as 90 percent of tomatoes get repacked, but we don't have confirmation that the number is that high. Obviously this complicates the trace-back," Acheson said Friday.
He also said that it was possible that tomatoes were contaminated at a packing and distribution center, not a particular farm. That means that produce from states that have been cleared may have gone through packing or distribution houses elsewhere, and become contaminated there.
The food poisoning scare ranks as the largest on record in terms of illnesses linked to tainted produce, the CDC said. "This is so far the biggest outbreak with this number of illnesses confirmed by culture," Griffin noted.
More than 300 of the total cases from the current outbreak have come from Texas. Patient ages range from under 1 year old to 99 years old. Half the victims are women.
Salmonella is a bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea in humans. Some 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported in the United States each year, although the CDC estimates that because milder cases are not diagnosed or reported, the actual number of infections may be 30 or more times greater. Approximately 600 people die each year after being infected.
However, the strain of Salmonella Saintpaul had been previously considered rare. In 2007, according to the CDC, there were only three people infected in the country during April through June.

Tomatoes salmonella headline roundup - June 11

Above pic shows scientist at FDA research lab in Irvine, Calif (AP)

Headlines on the hot topic:

Tainted tomatoes outbreak: Salmonella cases hit 167, 3 in Utah

More bad news on our plates: tainted tomatoes

U.S. Salmonella outbreak explained - New Scientist

From the New Scientist article:

This week, the world's biggest restaurant chain, McDonald's, stopped serving sliced tomatoes due to concern over a Salmonella outbreak that has affected at least 145 people, resulting in 23 hospitalisations.

Wal-Mart and some US grocery stores have shelved several varieties of the fruits, while federal investigators determine where the tainted tomatoes came from.

Here's our guide to why Salmonella outbreaks seem to be increasing in frequency and why cleaner vegetables might mean more outbreaks.

Isn't Salmonella an animal pathogen? What is it doing in tomatoes?

"They have to spend a lot time of their lives going between hosts," says Keith Warriner, a food microbiologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Pathogens like Salmonella have probably evolved to cope with life outside our intestines. The deadly Escherichia coli 0157:H7 strain thrives on leafy greens such as spinach and lettuce, while Salmonella tends to do best on fleshier fruits and vegetables.

Plant and animal pathogens really aren't that different, says Warriner. They share many of the same tricks of the trade, including molecular syringes that squirt toxins into cells and "grappling-hooks" that latch onto host cells and don't let go.

The bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal faeces, he says. Once Salmonella gets on and into a tomato, the fruit acts like an incubator. Bacteria divide even in the cool temperatures of packing houses. "If you get a few samples into the internal tissue, then they will grow for sure," Warriner adds.

How common are Salmonella outbreaks on vegetable and fruit produce?

A recent census of produce outbreaks between 1996 and 2007 counted no fewer than 33 epidemics from Salmonella-contaminated fruits and vegetables. In five of them, tomatoes were the culprit. Cantaloupe melons and sprouted seeds, such as clover and alfalfa, were also common victims. Animal pathogens tend to infect only a limited range of plants.

Are the strains different from the ones that come from undercooked chicken and raw eggs?

Yes, according to Warriner, the strains that infect tomatoes and other plants differ from the strains that you find in dairy and poultry. His lab is currently investigating how the produce strains adapt to tomatoes. So far, he has discovered that the bacteria tend to "turn up" a gene involved in stress responses.

The strain linked to the current outbreak, called "Saint Paul", is rare, but not too different from the other tomato-infecting strains. "There's nothing special about 'Saint Paul'," he says.

Why are we seeing more outbreaks linked to vegetable and fruit produce?

Nobody knows for sure, but scientists have a number of theories.

Fresh vegetables are increasingly packaged and shipped in centralised locations, so instead of a localised outbreak, we see a nationwide or even worldwide epidemic. And while not relevant to tomatoes, bagged produce seems to make some bacteria more virulent, Warriner says.

Scientists and inspectors are also taking harder look at produce as a source of disease. "10 years ago when we just started this research, if you had an outbreak you would have said it must have been the meat or the eggs," he says.

Shouldn't consumers and regulators demand cleaner produce?

Not necessarily, Warriner says. More thorough washing will also kill off the harmless bacteria that coat tomatoes and other produce. These bacteria compete against pathogens like Salmonella.

Warriner's lab found that tomatoes coated with a harmless form of a bug called Enterobacter were less likely to test positive for Salmonella. "If we make them too clean then it's going to be a bigger problem. Salmonella seems to like it when there's no competitor," he says.

Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group

Another invitation for Fresh Talk readers to join the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group. I think the message board for the industry has been a great venue for members to post industry related news and opinion since its inception in March 2007. We have 119 members and something new to read everyday (nearly 1,700 posts so far), and not mainly from me. Here is what is new today:

Luis comments on an article titled " Why did food sellers treat tomatoes like hot potatoes?"or - Life after the spinach outbreak.


Big Apple posts news of a New method that could end lettuce contamination.

Other topics today: GMA industry summit on import safety and UK produce industry "facelift."

Poll closed: Split decision

The Fresh Talk poll over the past week offered this question:

Are federal agencies and the industry better prepared to deal with a foodborne illness outbreak linked to produce than was the case two years ago?

No: 12
Yes: 11

TK: After an early lead by the yes vote, the responses later in the week were dominated by the "no" vote. While so much work has been done by so many since the spinach outbreak of two years ago, it is easy to see the industry is dispirited by the tomato/salmonella outbreak. We we are still in the midst of the crisis and lacking answers, and it is too soon to assign blame to the either the FDA or industry players. Clearly, there is more work to do to prevent contamination on the farm and throughout the supply chain, to identify the source of pathogens and minimize the impact of food borne illness on consumers and commerce.