Consumer Warning

Aug 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Stephanie Silk

Because of the growing trends of importing U.S. food supply and the frequent consumption of raw foods or foods with minimal processing, food safety has become a greater challenge.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees meat and poultry, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees most everything else, ensure the nation's food supply is safe. However, even with these efforts, an estimated 85 percent of known foodborne illness outbreaks are associated with foods regulated by these agencies.

Approximately 76 million Americans — one in four — are sickened by foodborne diseases each year. Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. Medical costs and lost productivity due to foodborne illnesses in the United States are estimated to cost $44 billion annually.

Recent incidents, such as the E. coli outbreak tied to tainted spinach and the salmonella outbreak traced to tomatoes (or was it jalapeño peppers?), have opened the forum for several groups to try and improve the nation's food safety, whether related to disease outbreak or terrorism. Here are some examples of what government, consumer and research groups are doing.

Agroterrorism, which is the malicious use of plant or animal pathogens to cause devastating disease, can kill people while crumbling an economy. Seeing that it has been an issue in foreign countries such as Israel and Chile, the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD) has funded Arizona State University with $263,000 to study the economic impact of what could happen in the event of an agroterrorism attack on American soil. Associate Professor William Nganje, along with four other ASU faculty members, focus their study on the transportation of imported produce coming through the border between Arizona and Nogales, Mexico, which is one of the busiest ports at the Southwest border.

According to Nganje, as many as 900 produce trucks pass through that port every day from the months of October to May. Nganje says that only three trucks out of every 100 coming across the border are inspected, and that only 3 percent of the boxes on those trucks are inspected.

“There is no way inspectors can examine every truck and every box of produce that comes across the border,” he says.

Nganje says they are closer to the goal of helping the NCFPD create food safety policies to prevent future intentional contamination incidents in the food supply chain.

The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture is one of many groups using technology to trace infected foods. They have partnered with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute for Hometown Security in Somerset, Ky., to make the nation's milk transportation as safe as possible.

In 2006, Univerity of Kentucky Regulatory Services Milk Coordinator Chris Thompson and Food Engineer Fred Payne created and are still testing a prototype milk security monitoring system they believe will provide assurance that milk, milk samples and the essential milk load and security data are safely transported between dairy farms and milk plants.

“The milk transport security system includes a security monitoring system mounted on the tanker itself, which includes a global positioning sensor, electronic locks, a keypad and temperature sensors,” Payne says.

New Mexico State University and the FDA are developing a prototype system for improving electronic screening, using open-source intelligence, of imported products offered for entry into the United States. The evaluation of the prototype system, PREDICT (Predictive Risk-Based Evaluation of Dynamic Import Compliance Targeting) has been completed and the final pilot evaluation document is under review.

Backing the need for more technology in the protection of the nation's food supply is the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Consumer Federation of America. It urges the FDA to put emergency rules in place to track the movement of produce.

“If [the FDA] had put a traceability plan in place two years ago, following the spinach outbreak, [the tomato salmonella outbreak] investigation may be moving more quickly,” says Chris Waldrop, a director at the Consumer Federation of America.

David Acheson, FDA's associate commissioner for food protection, has said that the process has been slow and admitted the agency needs to reexamine how it handles outbreaks.

The group says tracking technologies are already being used by produce companies, but the approach is voluntary and businesses are using different systems and approaches. They also called on the FDA to require growers and others handling produce to have food safety plans for their businesses.

To alert citizens of possible existing outbreaks, the USDA will begin listing retail stores receiving meat and poultry products involved in Class I recalls (those of the most serious concern to public health) this month.

USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) will post a list of retail stores that receive products subject to Class I recalls, the highest risk category, on its Web site within three to 10 business days of issuing the recall release.

During the recall process, FSIS personnel verify that the recalling firm has been diligent and successful in notifying its customers of the need to retrieve and control recalled products and that the customers have responded accordingly.

On the FSIS Web site, recall announcements will include the name of the establishment recalling the meat or poultry, the reason for the recall, a description of the recalled product, any identifying product codes, the recall classification and contact information at FSIS and the company involved.

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