The Price of Waiting...

 

On November 18 I received an e-mail from the U.S. PIRG (United States Public Interest Research Group) informing me that S.510, the Food Safety and Modernization Act, had come out of committee and was up for a vote as early at that day. The e-mail was in an effort to prompt concerned citizens, such as myself, to contact their senators and tell them to vote “yes” on the bill. The U.S. PIRG has issued a report about the effects of the bill being stalled in the Senate for more than a year. The report, titled “Recipe for Disaster: Food Recalls Proliferate While Food Safety Fix Awaits Action” is long, so I’ll just touch on the highlights.

 

Since the House passed its version of the food safety bill in July, 2009, S.510 has been waiting for time on the Senate’s floor schedule. And in those months, the FDA issued 85 recalls of food products. While the majority of the recalls were not connected to an outbreak of foodborne illness, nine of the recalls were tied to outbreaks in which 1,850 people fell ill. And as I wrote about last week, foodborne illnesses are dramatically underreported, so there were very likely many more illnesses attributable to foodborne contamination. The report included a list of all of the recalls, and one in particular caught my interest. In May there was a recall of black pepper which had sickened 272 people in 12 states with Salmonella. This was an example of what is termed a “rolling recall,” which means that a contaminated product finds its way into other foods, resulting in the recall of numerous individual food items. I never would have thought that black pepper could be contaminated, much less result in eight recalls! Also of note, Ohio was affected by 53 separate recalls in the period from July 2009 to September 2010. 

 I don’t know about you, but this brings home the point that if citizens want something done, they have the obligation to speak up. S.510 is controversial, but if you take a look at the folks arguing against the bill you might see that the bulk of them obviously have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The bill didn’t come up for a vote as predicted, so the issue is not yet resolved. If you want to have a say, contact your senators and tell them how you feel.

This, dear readers, is the last required post for my class project. I do hope you have learned something about food safety and the business of food safety, and maybe you can better protect yourself and your loved ones from falling victim to foodborne contaminants. I wish you well.

Food Poisoning or Stomach Bug?

I had been planning on writing about how businesses react to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses related to their products this week. But in the early morning hours on Saturday, I was graphically reminded of the toll that foodborne illness takes on all of us. My 14-year-old son, Mack, woke up at 3:30 a.m. with painful stomach cramps and vomiting. Now, it could have been a virus, but I don’t think so. A bit of research led me to conclude that it was probably food poisoning. The symptoms of food poisoning are usually identical to the symptoms of a gastrointestinal virus, so besides having a doctor run tests on a stool sample, the only way to know is based on the circumstances surrounding the illness. The first clue was that no one else in the house was sick, or has gotten sick since, even though we have been in close contact with him. The second clue is that by a stroke of coincidence, no one else in the house ate any of the same food that Mack ate on Friday. The bus driver treated the high school kids to donuts because the middle school kids were off on Friday. He ate lunch at school, which is the norm. And because my husband and I were dining out for our anniversary, we gave him some cash and permission to “make a run for the border,” so to speak.

Nine hours after his fast-food feast, he woke shivering and vomiting. After we had to strip his bed to wash the linens, he moved into our bed and my husband moved to the couch. At one point Mack opted to lie on the bathroom floor with a beach towel as a blanket instead of in our bed because he didn’t think he could make the bathroom when he vomited. Yep, it was as bad as it sounds. He finally stopped vomited around noon on Saturday, but he still didn’t feel well. Fever, body aches and a headache are other symptoms of both a “stomach bug” and a foodborne illness, and he had all of them. The treatment for both is the same: fluids, rest, fever reducers, and “supportive care” (baby them.) Only severe cases need the attention of a physician. Which begs the question, how does food poisoning get reported? According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), most counties request that doctors and hospitals report outbreaks of foodborne illness. Okay, but what about the people who don’t have symptoms severe enough to warrant a trip to the doctor or hospital?

The CDC also recommends that people who believe that they are part of an “outbreak of food borne illness” to contact their local health department. I’ve no way of knowing if my son’s illness is part of an outbreak since I don’t know who else may have eaten the offending fast food. But since I live in Greene County, I decided to see if I should take any reporting action. Turns out I could report my son’s bout of foodborne illness myself by filling out two forms and mailing them to the Greene County Combined Health District. My son would have to be able to reconstruct every single thing he ate for the past week, so I don’t think we will bother. I have to wonder how many other people either don’t know if it is a stomach virus or food poisoning, or just don’t bother reporting milder cases. The CDC assumes under reporting when compiling statistics about food borne illness, but some feel those estimates (76 million illnesses, 323,914 hospitalizations, and 5,194 deaths each year) are inaccurate. The good news is that since the CDC compiled those statistics, there has been a decrease in the number of reported cases of foodborne illness. I’m just glad my son’s bout with food poisoning was mild enough so he didn’t become a statistic.

Getting it Right?

Food safety is a topic of wide interest, and not just to consumers and lawmakers. The largest part of the puzzle is industry: farmers, wholesalers, producers, retailers, and restaurants. Over the past several weeks I have highlighted some of the failures of the food safety program in our country. I was curious to see if there are companies that are getting it right. The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) states that is goal is “To provide food safety professionals worldwide with a forum to exchange information on protecting the food supply.” The IAFP consists of people and organizations involved in all parts of the food chain, from growing, storing and transporting to processing and preparing all types of food. One of the objectives of the IAFP is to highlight companies who “get it right” by recognizing corporate efforts towards advancing food safety and quality through consumer programs, employee relations, educational activities, and compliance with standards. The Black Pearl Award is awarded annually to a company that the IAFP believes has done everything it should and more to protect the food supply. Past award winners include Kraft Foods, Inc. (1998), Caravelle Foods (1999), and Jack in the Box, Inc. (2004).

The winner of the Black Pearl Award for 2010 was Fresh Express, a subsidiary of Chiquita Brands, LLC which sells pre-packaged ready-to-eat salads. The company established a Scientific Advisory Panel comprised of food safety experts in 2006. The purpose of the panel was to assist the company in learning about E. coli 0157:H7 and how to prevent outbreaks related to that pathogen. While Fresh Express created its Scientific Advisory Panel prior to the 2006 E. coli outbreak traced to spinach, and none of the tainted products were traced to the company, Fresh Express allocated $2 million in research funds to study the dangerous pathogen. But even a great track record is no guarantee that a company’s product is safe.

The winner of the IAFP Black Pearl Award for 2010, Fresh Express, has been associated with multiple outbreaks of food borne disease this year. In May numerous people were sickened by salmonella-tainted romaine lettuce reportedly linked to the company, but there was no recall. Later that same month, Fresh Express did issue a recall of romaine lettuce after samples of the product tested positive for salmonella. Fortunately, there were no illnesses reported with the second incidence of salmonella. But in July the company was again forced to recall pre-packaged romaine lettuce after samples of the product tested positive for E. coli 0157:H7. The company issued a voluntary recall of 2,825 cases of Veggie Lovers’ Salad in August due to a possible risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The company’s problems in 2010 did not end there. The FDA issued a warning letter to the company on October 6 of this year which included required corrective actions. While Fresh Express seems to take food safety very seriously, it has still produced a product that is dangerous! My intention is not to slam Fresh Express, but to point out how challenging it can be for a corporation to ensure the safety of every food item it grows or produces. It may be challenging, but I believe that the safety of our food supply deserves to be the number one priority of food producers. Maybe the Black Pearl Award was more like the Curse of the Black Pearl? Award winner or not, Fresh Express needs to get its food safety act together.