Three food safety stories in the news this Fourth of July weekend. All three are worrisome but the third is the most worrisome of all. What are the first two?
You know them. The first is the largest produce associated multistate Salmonella outbreak on record (now over 900 cases in 40 states) rages on. Have they found the contaminated tomatoes? No. But now they think the tomatoes might be jalapeno peppers. Or maybe cilantro:
Investigators are seeing more signs that the salmonella outbreak blamed on tomatoes might have been caused by tainted jalapeno peppers and have begun collecting samples from restaurants and from the homes of those who have been sickened, according to health officials involved in the probe.New interviews with those who became infected found that many had eaten jalapeno peppers, often in salsa served with Mexican food, according to two state health officials. So far, none of the jalapenos taken from restaurants and from the homes of those who became ill have tested positive for Salmonella saintpaul.
Echoing federal officials, who said this week that tomatoes remain the prime suspect, the health officials said that tomatoes cannot be ruled out as the cause of the outbreak. Investigators have been collecting samples of another possible suspect, cilantro, though the herb is less likely to be the source, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. (John Rockoff, Baltimore Sun)
According to the Baltimore Sun article, their biggest worry is that now epidemiology will be impugned as a tool for food safety prevention. Enraged tomato growers think the FDA should have found evidence of contaminated tomatoes before pulling the warning trigger. I understand their anger, but I won't fault FDA for taking a precautionary approach here. But it also sounds like maybe they didn't do such a good job of outbreak investigation and traceback and should have included other foodstuffs in the investigation. That's lack of experienced fieldstaff. Now they've got a huge mess on their hands and their ability to use one of the most important tools in their arsenal, epidemiology, may be compromised. Heck of job, FDA (CDC hasn't helped, either). Worrisome.
Second story: a recall of 5 million pounds of beef with suspected E. coli contamination.
Omaha-based Nebraska Beef Ltd. launched a recall Monday, about a month after consumers in Michigan and Ohio became ill after eating ground beef purchased at Kroger grocery stores. The meat was traced back to the Nebraska meat processor, which initially recalled about 531,707 pounds of beef. The recall was expanded to more than 5 million pounds on Thursday.
Even before the recall's expansion, it sent grocers scrambling to pull the potentially tainted product off store shelves, just as consumers were stocking up for the holiday weekend. (Dallas Morning News)
More tainted beef from a huge midwestern meatpacker, distributing nationwide. That's worrisome, too, especially as it seems to keep happening.
So what's even more worrisome than two stories of gigantic failures in maintaining the safety of the US food supply? That in the midst of all this, the US FDA would issue a Press Release patting itself on the back for the great job they're doing in food safety:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2008FDA Food Protection Plan Shows Significant Progress
The agency unveiled the plan just months ago to help keep Americans enjoying one of the safest food supplies in the world
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Food Protection Plan Progress Report, released today in conjunction with the Interagency Working Group on Import Safety Action Plan Update, shows significant areas of activity to further improve the safety of America's food supply since unveiling its Food Protection Plan in November 2007.
The improvements highlight the agency's efforts to address domestic and global changes in our food supply to help keep consumers enjoying one of the safest food supplies in the world. (opening of FDA Press Release)
In fairness, the presser goes on to say that much more needs to be done and the agency hopes Congress will give it more money and more authority. But that's about as fair as I'm going to be, because the way the statement should have started is to say that recent events show dramatically the system is broken and urgently needs to be fixed. That, of course, would be to state the obvious: the Bush FDA is an unbroken record of failure. Why would anyone trust their ability to fix it now? Yes, Congress should give them more resources and do it ASAP. Expanded authority? That will require Congress to act and food safety overhaul is being attempted by the current Democratic Congress.
Real progress, though, will probably have to await both a new Congress and a new administration. There is too much obstruction from Republicans and some Bush Dog Democrats in the current Congress and the Bush administration is a lost cause, a catastrophic collection of incompetent and corrupt morons. We'll just have to wait out the next 198 days and hope that whoever is elected in November will return us to a usual or better level of competence and probity. That's a pretty modest objective, but it's been good enough in the past, in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
This one, though, is one for the books. I can't wait until it's one for the history books.
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Oh don't worry, the market will take care of it...
Robert is right. Rational customers will stop buying food until it safe again. Just so long as outsource the functionality of the CDC and the FDA to a deserving company such as Monsanto or Basic Research.
There needs to be a fund to compensate growers and handlers for errors like this, just as there are punitive fines for mishandling food. I watched this situation unfold from inside a food company. Florida growers and produce handlers with food safety certifications (multiple in some instances) found their product was worthless because their state was not given a clean bill of health in time. Truly ridiculous. As you point out, the real tragedy is people (farmers, food handlers, shippers) will not trust future announcements, putting us all at risk.
You US guys must be loving the current administration to death. However, I'm quite sure some(one) would disagree with you, revere.
Cue obligatory rant in 3... 2... 1...
Your headline implies that FDA is involved in all three of these stories. Sorry, but FDA is NOT responsible for meat safety in this country - that is the responsibility of the USDA, an entirely separate department (FDA is part of HHS).
wheresyouraccuracy: You make a fair point. But so do we. Look again at the FDA statement:
Meat is part of the food supply. Where's FDA's accuracy, then, if they do not want to include it? Do you think FDA is doing a good job? More particularly to your point, was anything I said about FDA unfair? And why?
I am sure that conservatives who think that the free market does the best job of protecting the consumer are in denial about this. Sure, it's all well and good to say that producers who take shortcuts on food safety will eventually be weeded out of the market. In the meantime, there are some very sick people who would rather see a bit of regulation in the marketplace, and an administration interested in running an effective FDA.
What is the good of being in the richest nation in the world if our food supply is as dangerous as the poorest nations?
Cue references to the "Alar" scare in
5..4..3..2..
Although meat is part of the food supply, you also need to consider the issue of regulatory jurisdiction over the food supply, which in this country is divided among a number of departments and agencies, most notably FDA and USDA. My basic point is that your post did not reflect the different regulatory jurisdictions over the food supply, and thus was unfair to FDA.
The FDA press release did not define "food supply", but if you review the Food Protection Plan itself, this is the first paragraph in the introduction:
"Every day across the country, people eat out, buy groceries, and cook meals for their families. Americans expect that all their food will be safe, and FDA plays a critical role in making sure this is true. FDA is responsible for the safety of the vast range of food Americans eat; about 80 percent of all food sold in the United States. This includes everything except for meat, poultry, and processed egg products, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)."
You ask "Where's FDA's accuracy, then, if they do not want to include it?" As the statement above indicates, it is not a matter of "not wanting to include it," it is that FDA does not have jurisdiction over/responsibility for regulating meat. And since FDA does not regulate meat, it is unfair to imply (as your headline, and the lack of any reference to USDA, does) that the beef recall, or the contamination that led to it, was an FDA responsibility.
wheresyour accuracy: I conceded your point about jurisdiction but made additional points which you seem to think are unimportant, namely, that the FDA was not particularly precise in claiming (a clearly false) sense of progress in the face of food safety catastrophe which is within its jurisdiction and what seems more and more to be a botched investigation. You have made a very large issue out of what you concede is an inference from a blog post title (and I will also concede the inference you made is a plausible one) but don't address the major point of the post, the broken system (which you also emphasize by noting the regulatory fragmentation) and the broken agencies involved in the US food supply, a responsibility FDA took on itself in its own press release (and which you wish to absolve them of in part because the system is broken and some of the fault belongs on a sister agency which is doing as bad a job as FDA). Do you acknowledge that touting progress in food safety while two major food safety episodes are taking place, one at FDA's very doorstep, is not very bright or even truthful?
Inexpensive, effective, low cost, low does irradiation is widely regarded by food safety experts as the solution to these outbreaks. Requiring a protective control to food contamination where an effective and timely trace back system does not exist makes sense in a world where intentional tainting exists.
Who would doubt the potential harm of an intentional act?
see GOOGLE SEARCH: intentional tainting
Revere, is there any time in history that you were satisfied with the FDA, CDC, or a Republican Administration? That is besides the day they left? I have never, ever heard you say anything good about them ever. The constant denigration of this Administration makes me want to know how you felt about all of the above during say the Clinton Administration. Prior to that it was Bush, Reagan and Carter. So were you ever satisfied with the way things went in their particular outbreaks of salmonella. There was always at least one that was contaminated with salmonella, listeria or something else in all of their administrations.
I mean really for my way of thought here I think we should do away with them all. Dissatisfaction can be fixed by removing the agency and then you can only go after Congress. You are talking about food safety in a dept that doesnt have a lot of money and the Congress votes the money. They have had two years and its a lefty/libbie run one now with Nazi Pelosi who would take over all of the refineries, turn your property over to private developers and then we can add in carbon makes you sick Reid. The latter is so dumb it makes you wonder if there was an inbreeding accident. My 15 year old makes more sense than he does on the subject.
But you know something else? Republicans are smart enough to understand that this is now likely no accident and not a cross contamination either and we had better start acknowledging that the possibility exists-terrorism. We are buying farm fresh now and straight from the farmers for all of our veggies. You would be smart to as well. But again, have you ever been satisfied to any degree with these depts and agencies under any administration?
Not a bait. I do want to know.
RMK, the notion that this is deliberate contamination by terrorists is nonsense. Real terrorists would use something nasty, like anthrax. Anthrax would be much more stable than salmonella, it has a much longer incubation time, and it a lot more deadly. There is only a slight difference in degree of difficulty in growing anthrax vs growing salmonella. Anthrax spores are stable essentially indefinitely. They would therefore be easier to spread on food. If 900 people got anthrax and waited only a day after having symptoms to be treated, likely hundreds would be dead. In the Soviet anthrax accident, 2/3 of those infected died despite treatment.
"Real" terrorists wouldn't give warnings to take antibiotics the way the "faux" terrorists did who sent anthrax to liberals. Oh wait, they didn't warn the two Democrats they sent anthrax to, they did warn the media.
Tony watched from within a food company. I watched from within a public health agency. I did NOT listen in on the conference calls, but I know (and talk to) those who did.THIS IS A PERSONAL OPINIONI was struck early by a couple of things. 1. they went right to tomatoes, and 2. they didn't issue a recall, but merely an "advisory" stating that there appeared to be an outbreak, and it appeared to be related to tomatoes, and that consumers shouldn't eat roma or red round tomatoes. That is a less than strong statement. (I understand the shading is lost on the general public.)I thought when they backed off of their statement the other day and said they still thought it was the tomatoes, but it might be something else that there would be hell to pay, and now there is. But epidemiology is an inexact science, and sometimes you make mistakes. (That's why my pencil eraser wears out before the lead does.) Having said that, had they waited to release their warning until they had it locked down, and we now had a case count of [insert your favorite 4 or 5 digit number here] instead of what we have because people not only quit eating tomatoes, but also passed on the pico and the guaq and the other stuff with fresh tomatoes (and jalapenos and cilantro), the knives would be out for them in that case, too.Point is that they are humans doing the best they can. Many of the best of them have been run off over the past 7 years, and so, we get what we get. Maybe it will get better in the next administration.Me, I'm waiting until the local tomatoes get ripe.
Randy: It is hardly possible to take you seriously when you talk this way. I know the federal health establishment much better than you do because I worked in it. I was a fed. These agencies have had their ups and downs but pretty much weren't subject to the kind of political machinations we have seen from Bush. You apparently have no idea of what it is like now or in the past, you just defend the indefensible (Bush), someone even right wingers are deploring because he is without principle, competence or credibility. To call Pelosi -- whom I don't care for -- a Nazi is to discredit everything you say. It isn't serious, it is just mindless ranting at that point, not serious discourse and clearly not even meant to be.
MoM -- I do not wish to disparage colleagues of whom you hold a high opinion. On the other hand, what Revere said in the previous post on this topic makes sense to me: you can't expect good results when political connections are valued over training and experience at agencies dealing with public health.
Do you feel your colleagues (or their superiors, or their staffs) were hampered by inexperience and lack of skill in epidemiology (i.e., failing to do case control studies as Revere notes), or is that unfair assessment? If lack of experience or skill were not the problem, what was? If there was a reason behind not doing case control studies, do you know what it was?
I believe these are humans doing their best. I would too, if it were my job. That doesn't mean I would be any good at it.
Revere-You still didnt answer the question. You side stepped it. Its not a mindless rant when I have looked at the past and the actions of two very questionable leaders. They are the antithesis of GWB if you hold him such low regard. I at least give them the respect due to their office, but not of their actions.
Pelosi and Reid are the most worthless Majority Leader and Speaker I have ever seen. Pelosi wanted the taxpayers to buy her a brand new 747 fitted out like AF1 for a smooth 200 million and indeed she supported the taking of private property. Pelosi supported Murtha who called our Marines murderers and killers and vice versa. Seems that the military courts have found that to be not true. She also made some pretty shitty remarks on her own. Shoe fits pretty good as far as I am concerned. I can tell you what would happen if they showed up down here to take property for a private developer from an individual just so they can make tax money off of it. But thats typical socialism/communism for you. Change the law to accommodate your need.
Reid on the tube three days ago was going on about carbon killing you and it was the most idiotic rant I have heard out of a politician in years. But both sit there and rant about greening up, with nothing to replace it thats viable in any way shape form or fashion. So which is more mindless?
AS for the past Revere I found a little over 200 salmonella detections and outbreaks since Carter...Those were the ones that were posted up at least and a bunch of listeria ones. Only a few of those actually went symptomatic. All were VERY minor compared to this. So that in itself is pretty cognizant so its not a mindless rant. But the reach of this particular outbreak is now at the level of national security and Deadie is wrong. Its very hard to weaponize anthrax but once its out there its pretty wicked. Might this be a dry run Deadie using salmonella and to see how far it goes? Sure, look at the flip side of the coin every now and then and dont make such a blanket assumption.
As MoM said, they didnt stop importations either which likely has compounded it. Well they started yesterday and its expanding. The Chinese are pissed, the Mexicans are pissed. But what are we supposed to do? Keep on letting it flow in? I doubt seriously that its peppers or tomatoes either. Something is very rotten and its a lot more than the peppers and love apples.
Revere you were a fed? Please let us know what branch it was....
Caia-Remember what Sherlock said about elimination of the impossible?
Here is my think on the entire affair. If it is terrorism then we obviously need to reallocate resources to take care of a suddenly huge problem. This would be far worse than 9/11 if the food supply is tainted. It will also add huge costs to bringing food to the marketplace, and you might have to strip down to go to work in a food processing plant or to transport it. In addition to that the amigos who are processing it will likely get the boot because now they are security risks. Just like the airport. Take your shoes off if you have them. Give up the green card and SSN. This might have a silver lining in it to a point.
If its not, then which agency is it that has jurisdiction? I hear Revere kicking the FDA, CDC, and maybe USDA in the teeth but likely only because they are run by the Bush Administration. Its like they went on leave the day he arrived because they have had a non point of source outbreak, like it never happened before. Its never been this big before though and thats what many are starting to ask questions about.
He also accuses me of defending GWB. Not really but when he leaves in January he is really going to have to make his requirements known to the new administration. I mean we had outbreaks during Carter, a few during Reagan, a couple during Bush 1, quite a few during Clinton and I think about 1 or 2 per year during GWB. So what demigod is going to walk in and take care of Revere and his concerns?
The answer will be no one. Its going to be just as bad as it was in the past, it is now and will be in the future.
Really, we have to decide what we are going to do because in his opinion all outbreaks apparently are preventable. The UK has them, Germany has them, the Swedes had one if I understand it last year. All of this is so European in thrust towards our system that it reeks. But their systems are plus or minus maybe a point or two are exactly as bad as ours. So what is it specifically that he would like to see? I dont know. Its always a Bash first.
Adding to this problem we just have a media that is prepared to make news at every turn and anything to vilify GWB, something that this blog also does. Its a political blog, not a medical or health type. So you get what you expect.
So, do we find the source or not? What if its never determined and just goes away? Revere will call that a failure too because the surveillance that is now in high gear and cant find it. Are we prepared to raise the price of food in the US to a level that all foods get tested before they go to market? This will result in malnutrition in our own population because they wont be able to afford to eat.
So where do we go from here?
In vultus procul preteritus nos reperio extraho. In extraho nos reperio politics
MoM- I may have made the same call if I were in the public health sector, indeed our internal HAACP chief expected we would follow the CDC lead without question. It's just that it didn't make sense from our perspective. We had growers who passed every food safety audit imaginable whose product we couldn't sell because of where they lived. If these certifications are to mean anything, it's time the CDC gives growers who go through this effort a green light while they sort out what's happening. My other point was the need for compensatory mechanisms for food producers and handlers in situations such as this. This isn't a "cost of doing business" you can pass on to your customers. You have a perishable commodity, you sell it or lose it. You don't get to charge a higher price later on to make up for your loss.
Finally, buying local is no guarantee of a safe product. I've worked with very nice local growers who sell direct to consumers who are just getting around to installing portable toilets and hand washing stations for their migrant field help. If you remember, some of the first ecoli outbreaks occurred on New England apple orchards. The bacteria didn't seem to care whether the owner was a corporation or a farm family.
Tony - Yes, I agree that buying local isn't any guarantee, just as only eating home prepared food isn't any guarantee. I can't count the times when food histories from people with enteric illnesses (Salmonella, Shigella, E coli and Campylobacter) only listed the places they ate out, not what they ate at home, yet I'd wager that far more cases of foodborne illness are caused by contamination and abuse at home than in the commercial food preparation sector.
Caia - short answer is 'yes', they did do a case-control study. Started with a small one, and now it I understand it is being expanded. I believe that results of the 1st one are part of the reason they backed off of their focus on tomatoes. I have no idea where that focus came from in the first place. As I said, my contact with this has been second hand.
MRK - It is difficult to discuss your points, as I haven't a clue from whence they came. CDC gets reports of over 40,000 cases of Salmonellosis each year and has for decades. That is the tip of the iceberg. They estimate over a million cases per year go undiagnosed. CDC reported in the MMWR ( http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5510a1.htm#fig1 ) that between 1998 and 2002, there were 1184 foodborne disease outbreaks from bacterial causes. Of those 585 were from Salmonella. That accounted for over 37,000 cases of which nearly 17,000 were from Salmonella.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5510a1.htm#fig1
More recent (2006) data shows that in 10 states that participate in FoodNet, nearly 6000 of 17,000 cases (~39%) of FBI were from Salmonella. This had not changed from the baseline period 1996 - 1998.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5614a4.htm
There have been terrorist attacks using foodbonre agents. The largest and most often cited was the attack on the Dalles, Oregon in 1984 by the Rajneeshees that resulted in over 750 cases. You might recall that the way that case was "solved" was after warrants were issued and the compound was searched.
That was a local phenomenon. The problems associated with multi-state outbreaks are associated with the now-current practice of aggregating the produce from many sources and then shipping them all across the country. Thus, although your tomatoes may come from a supplier in Texas, they may have been grown in Oklahoma, Arizona, Louisiana, or Mexico, shipped to Texas, batched together, and shipped to your store in Tennessee. It is that aggregation that has made this investigation particularly difficult. And it is the very producers and distributors who have complained the most about the advisory who worked to block source labeling of meats and produce whenever it has come up in Congress.
Odd, I posted a response to the above yesterday and the system ate it. since I'm working right now, I can't recreate it. Maybe later.
The fact that there is even a debate about whether FDA is competent demonstrates something important: the past seven years of cronyism and "faith-based science" and all the rest of it, have eroded our trust in government being able to perform essential functions.
Think about that for a moment.
It was Reagan's EPA that issued the first reports warning of climate change. This I know because I went to the Federal Book Store in an adjacent city to purchase the complete multi-volume set as soon as it became available.
Whatever issues some folks may have had with the Reagan administration, at least there was not a question about government being able to do its job with professional objectivity and competence.
Same case for Bush Senior and for Clinton. And I had my serious peeves with the Clinton administration over telecom-related policies with which I was professionally involved at the time.
This time it's different. And if every time we smell a certain smell, we see a little critter with black & white stripes, after a while the going assumption is that skunks are lurking around.
At this point it really is time for a clean sweep, followed by a strong scrub with lots of soap and warm water, and then a thorough rinse. McCain is a good guy but he's got too much baggage on him, too many favors owed to people who have benefited mightily from the present disaster in office. We need to clean out the whole lot of entrenched interests on both sides of the aisle, and the fact that Obama pulled a huge come-from-behind demonstrates that Democrats are as fed up with their own biz-as-usual as Americans in general are fed up with the present goings-on.
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MRK, don't even get me started on Kelo. I was foaming at the mouth about eminient domain when I first learned about it, around age 10 or 11, and I hit the roof when the Kelo decision came out. Be glad the SC just affirmed the individual rights position on the 2nd A. "The Second protects the First and all the rest."
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I agree that there should be compensation for growers who took the steps to get certified and then lost it all to collective punishment by state boundary. God knows we already write enough checks to farmers, but in this case they took a hit as a direct result of a government action and that should be compensated.
Compensating those farmers will also do much to alleviate the potential for pressure against epidemiological studies and warnings and so on. This is the compelling public policy reason for giving them taxpayer dollars: the need to ensure that the system itself can continue to function.
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I don't think it's crazy to go looking for potential terrorism here. Back in the early 80s, members of the Rajneesh cult deliberately spread salmonella via a local salad bar as part of a bizarre local power-grab. Salmonella would also be an ideal marker for potential transmission routes, a way of testing government response to a disease outbreak.
Once the infectious foods can be identified and samples obtained, it should be a relatively simple matter to do the kinds of genetic testing on the bacteria, that have potential to identify a deliberately spread pathogen as distinct from one that has spread via natural circumstances.
To the extent that this type of testing can be done, it should be done, for the sake of completeness.
There needs to be a fund to compensate growers and handlers for errors like this, just as there are punitive fines for mishandling food. I watched this situation unfold from inside a food company. Florida growers and produce handlers with food safety certifications (multiple in some instances) found their product was worthless because their state was not given a clean bill of health in time. Truly ridiculous. As you point out, the real tragedy is people (farmers, food handlers, shippers) will not trust future announcements, putting us all at risk.
There needs to be a fund to compensate growers and handlers for errors like this, just as there are punitive fines for mishandling food. I watched this situation unfold from inside a food company. Florida growers and produce handlers with food safety certifications (multiple in some instances) found their product was worthless because their state was not given a clean bill of health in time. Truly ridiculous. As you point out, the real tragedy is people (farmers, food handlers, shippers) will not trust future announcements, putting us all at risk.