So now we have to be worried about peanut butter treats … and baby formula?  This year, a national salmonella outbreak tied, to the Peanut Corporation of America, has so far claimed eight lives and sickened an estimated 19,000 people in 43 states.  It also triggered a national recall of everything from dog treats to TV dinners.  Combined with last year’s melamine outbreak in China, which did make it into some of our infant formulas, it shows that Americans have reason to be concerned about the safety of food produced in this country and abroad.

So why does this keep happening?  We at keepourfoodsafe.org, and many other organizations, including the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, have been calling for changes that we feel would dramatically improve food safety in America.  In short, there should be one federal body overseeing food safety.

Today, the job of overseeing food safety is split between numerous agencies.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the primary players, but a baker’s dozen of other agencies also help divide up food safety oversight.  Clearly, in this case, more isn’t better. 

When oversight is split between agencies in this fashion, it raises questions about coordination of efforts.  For example, some products, like a frozen, pepperoni pizza, fall under both USDA and FDA oversight—one pizza, two U.S. inspection bodies.  The cheese on the pizza has FDA regulatory oversight, and the pepperoni has USDA oversight. And a split system creates added hurdles in keeping food safety inspections balanced.  In a sense, under our current system, the USDA is competing with the FDA for federal food-safety funding, and visa versa.

What’s more, at the FDA, food inspection services are overshadowed by regulation of drugs, which receives the lion’s share of federal budgets for the FDA.  There is little relationship between food inspections and drugs approvals, so it makes perfect sense to split the FDA and create a new agency under the direction of the USDA.

The concept of reorganizing our nation’s food safety systems has allies on Capitol Hill.  Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the Senate’s top Democrats, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) have both called for reform of food-inspection service in the past year.  But perhaps this is a change so fundamental that it will require the leadership of the president to get it done.

There are other problems.  The USDA is chronically short of meat inspectors due to a growing shortage of veterinarians.  Currently, it’s estimated that only about 900 of 1,200 of these positions are filled at the USDA.  To make the new food safety administration work properly, it will need a skilled workforce to staff it.  Veterinarians are important players in our food-safety systems.  They inspect meat, keep animals healthy and work at state and federal public health agencies.  Investments in veterinary education will be required to accomplish the goal of improving food safety in America.

It’s important to remember that America does enjoy some of the safest food in the world, but we shouldn’t rest on our laurels when there is such a clear course to improving food safety systems and saving lives.  It’s just common sense—one agency should oversee our nation’s food supply.

Recently, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that traces of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aurerus, the bacteria commonly known as MRSA, are present on swine farms in the Midwest, prompting some members of Congress and public health advocates to call for an investigation of our food supply for the presence of the bacteria. While we here at Keep Our Food Safe are strong advocates of vigilance when it comes to protecting our nation’s food supply, this reaction may be a little too premature.  Let me explain.

Staphylococcus aurerus is a bacteria found in many forms; sometimes it can cause an infection, but not always.  In fact, about one-third of the people in this country are colonized with the staph bacteria.  But don’t worry, that just means the bacteria is present on their body somewhere, not necessarily causing an infection.  Staph bacteria is the most common cause of minor skin infections, like pimples and boils, and is usually treated with antibiotics.  But staph infections can also be responsible for more serious illnesses, like pneumonia, which is why it’s so important to practice good hygiene to minimize the chance of the bacteria spreading.

Human strains of MRSA are some of the more deadly types of staph infections.  What puts the MR in MRSA is the fact that this strain is resistant to the antibiotic methicillin, making infection difficult to treat.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about 1.5 percent of the U.S. population is colonized with MRSA.

For a long time, health officials thought MRSA was only present in people, but evidence of colonization has been found in our dogs, cats, horses and pigs.  Additionally, a report surfaced indicating the bacteria was present in pork in the Netherlands and Canada.  Since the United States imports more than 760 million pounds of Canadian pork, Dr. Tara Smith, an epidemiologist from the University of Iowa College of Public Health, was prompted to conduct a series of tests on swine farms in Iowa and Illinois. Dr. Smith’s report indicated nearly 70 percent of the pigs and more than 60 percent of workers tested positive for a MRSA colonization.

But before you fill up your garbage can with all the pork in your freezer, it’s important to think about a few things.  The sample size Dr. Smith used to conduct her study was incredibly small – 299 pigs and only 20 employees – and what she found was a unique strain of MRSA unrelated to the strains causing human illness.  In addition, MRSA colonization was present on only one of the farms.

Dr. Smith suggested in her report that there might be a link between the use of antibiotics and the presence of MRSA in the swine, and that perhaps the use resulted in an increased incidence of MRSA in the animals. She makes a good point, but if this particular MRSA isn’t causing the animals to get sick and it’s not causing humans to get sick, we should probably make sure that the use of those antibiotics is actually a bad thing before we go jumping to conclusions.

Antibiotics can be a good thing.  They really don’t stay in the animal’s system long enough that you’d be consuming antibiotics.  Plus antibiotics keep both animals and people healthy, and without them, more diseases can spread. The American Veterinary Medical Association agrees. 

Bottom line?   Colonization means the bacteria is present, not that infection is present.  And while it may be worthwhile to test livestock and workers to minimize occupational hazards, most public health officials and food animal veterinarians agree MRSA transmission is not a problem in our food supply.  So as always, practice good hygiene and cook your meat according to the directions or to suggestions by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   As for that ham sandwich?  Go ahead and enjoy.

It's time for another Chew on This podcast. In our latest podcast, Dr. Steven Sundloff, a veterinarian and Director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, addresses whether we should worry about food safety and explains the important role that veterinarians play in protecting our nation’s food supply. Dr. Sundloff also tells us what resources are available for us to check whether or not our food is safe to eat.

And remember, new 'Chew on This' podcasts ared released around the beginning and middle of every month. Check back here regularly to make sure you haven't missed anything.If you have suggestions for future 'Chew on This' topics, feel free to drop us a line in the comment section below.

Listen to "Should I Worry about Food Safety?"

O.k., this post is a little off-subject from our normal food safety-centric write-ups, but it’s important nonetheless. You’re still with us, right? What we’re writing about today is a food animal tracking system, NAIS. And while it won’t make your food safer, per se, it will provide a safeguard to maintain food security by protecting animal health. This is an important distinction because, when we typically talk food safety, we’re referring to the expectation we all share that each morsel and bite we eat is, well, safe from disease and toxins. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) focuses instead on ensuring the availability of our animal food supply, and this is something you should definitely care about.

NAIS, a program run by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, helps track and trace the movement of livestock throughout the country. Basically, NAIS will tag food animals such as cows, and, as a consequence, know where each animal has been moved to or has been.

It may sound silly to monitor farm animals so closely, but the identification system serves an important purpose: fighting animal disease. By enabling a disease to be traced within a 48-hour period, NAIS will dramatically improve the United States’ response capacity to limit the spread of animal diseases.

Why do we say dramatically? Because, according to JAVMA News, “Investigators spent an average of 199 days tracing the sources of animals infected with bovine tuberculosis between October 2005 and August 2007.” So, if you think about it, that is pretty dramatic, isn’t it – decrease the response time from 199 days to 48 hours. Think of the time and effort that can be saved, and the potential for avoiding the spread of illness and disease. And when you save animals from getting sick, you’re not only protecting human health, you’re saving all of us money in the long run.

For example, a disease like foot and mouth disease (FMD) spreads very quickly, and a rapid response is critical to preventing a potential national outbreak that could cost millions of animals’ lives and billions of dollars. Or, if a cow is showing any signs that it may be affected with “mad cow disease” (BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy), NAIS would allow authorities to rapidly identify and locate the offspring of that cow and other cows that may have been exposed to the same feed that was eaten by that cow, preventing them from entering our food system.

NAIS is not yet mandatory, but that hasn’t stopped savvy ranchers and livestock producers from getting on board with the system. By December 2008, almost a third (492,000) of the nation's food animal production facilities were registered. To encourage more farmers and ranchers to register with the system, the USDA has asked veterinarians to talk up the benefits of the system. The USDA has even developed a tool kit to help the vets out. (Veterinarians are also encouraged to register their own premises, including their veterinary hospitals.)

The benefits are obvious and registration is easy. Farmers first sign up for premises identification, a way for authorities to contain disease by locating producers in an area. After that, livestock must be registered individually or in lots and permanently identified (depending on the species).

We hope the remaining two thirds of food animal producers will get on board with NAIS sooner rather than later. Sure, we’ve made significant progress fighting disease in livestock, and sure, there are no major disease epidemics in farm animals at the moment. But why wait for the unforeseen to take action? Forty-eight hours sure sounds a lot better than 199 days to us, and we all want to make sure there’s an adequate food supply available in our country.