021015 US Food Safety Efforts Struggle Amid Illness

Kansas City, MO - For Elsa Murano, a leader in the fight over US food safety, the news has not been good lately.

With at least 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight Northeastern US states connected this week to food poisoning, and investigators probing a separate contamination problem that sickened dozens of people in the Midwest, the system the Murano is charged with strengthening appears very much broken.

"That is awful, absolutely terrible," said Murano, under secretary for food safety for the US Department of Agriculture. "I can't tell you how urgently I feel we need to do something about this."

Food safety is a significant problem in the US, with thousands of people made ill every year from what they eat. The severity of the sicknesses ranges from stomach cramps to death and often times the culprit is as innocuous as the lettuce leaves from a local salad bar or the medium-rare burger from a backyard barbecue.

All told, an estimated 5,000 people die from food-borne illnesses each year and an estimated 76 million become ill in the United States. From 1990 to 2002, more than 90,300 different food-borne illnesses were reported, according to a report issued last month by the Center for the Science in the Public Interest.

Salads, pizza and sandwiches were linked to 11,500 cases of food poisoning. Overall, the most common bearers of bad bacteria are produce, poultry, eggs, beef and seafood.

"Food safety problems are falling through the cracks," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of CSPI's food safety program and an active lobbyist on Capitol Hill. "There is a huge amount of work to do."

BACTERIA BREEDING GROUND

Common livestock production practices, in which large numbers of animals are confined in closely crowded quarters, contribute to the problem as animals spend a good portion of their lives standing or laying in manure, which incubates a variety of dangerous pathogens.

The manure can also contaminate area water sources used to irrigate crops.

Slaughterhouses where thousands of animals are killed with stun guns, bled and processed, provide a further breeding ground for problem pathogens as speedy assembly lines and mixing of meat from many different animals make it difficult to contain any problems and help spread bacteria.

At virtually every stage of processing, until the food is eaten by the consumer, a product can become contaminated. Consumers themselves sometimes contaminate the food they eat, using improper handling and cooking techniques.

For years, agricultural interests have been seeking a solution to the pathogen problem. At the slaughterhouse, workers wash carcasses with steam vacuums and hot water showers. In some cases, irradiation is used to zap meat with invisible rays meant to kill bacteria, obviously spoiled meat is discarded and random sampling and testing is conducted to try to identify any contamination by microscopic pathogens.

Over the last 10 years, vacuum packaging technologies, refrigeration improvements, and other practices have improved food safety to an extent. Since 1996, a 23% overall drop in bacterial food borne illnesses has been recorded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have also been efforts to educate consumers about proper food handling procedures.

Still, with millions continuing to get sick, figuring out how to further reduce food poisoning incidents adds up to a significant challenge for those trying to keep food safe.

"The industry is working terribly hard in research and in practice to try to get food to the market as safely as we possibly can," said Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Association.

FOOD POLICE

The US food safety system traces its regulatory history to 1906 when the government passed regulations providing for government inspections of plants where cattle, hogs and chickens were slaughtered and processed. Inspectors at that time relied primarily on visual inspections. Today, they test for a variety of bacteria but many plants have been allowed to test themselves and are exempt from federal testing.

Industry experts point out that testing is not an assurance of safety because tests of a box of beef, for example, could find the sampled portion clean, despite a deadly pathogen lurking next to the sampled section.

Consumer groups have lobbied for additional measures aimed at both preventing contamination of food and identifying problems when they have already occurred. They have called for a central food safety agency instead of the 10 different federal agencies currently holding oversight of food safety, most notably the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration.

The USDA continues to search for ways to control outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Under the guidance of Murano, the Food Safety and Inspection Service last month issued new policies aimed at combating E. coli O157:H7, which can cause bloody diarrhea and vomiting and lead to kidney failure and death.

Slaughter and grinding plants will have to adhere to more stringent testing and increased process controls. One hundred scientifically trained consumer safety officers are randomly visiting meat plants around the country and their ranks will increase next year. And plants will no longer be exempted from government testing and allowed to test themselves.

"We've seen a dramatic decrease in food-borne pathogens, but obviously we haven't wiped out all these illnesses," said Murano, who has been in the job one year. "There are still cases that take place."

FOOD SCARES

A series of food scares have occurred recently, including one of the largest meat recalls in history, when ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled 19 million pounds of ground beef this summer because of an E coli outbreak.

More recently, on Oct. 3, US health and food officials blamed a food-borne listeria outbreak for at least 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight Northeastern US states.

The day before, Cargill Inc. said the USDA closed its ground beef plant in Wisconsin because of an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 that sickened at least 57 people in seven states.

And Friday, Northeast regional grocery chain Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. said it was recalling fresh ground beef products sold through its stores in August and September because of possible contamination with the E. coli bacteria.

"I do not want to sit here and see any more of these recalls or these outbreaks," said Murano. "I'm declaring war."

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