USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has begun offering food safety updates and tips via Twitter, the popular social networking service. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, the service allows users to provide brief text messages that are displayed on the user's page on www.Twitter.com. The updates can also be sent or read via cell phones, PDAs and social networking sites, such as Facebook.

According to an FSIS press release, the FSIS Twitter presence helps the agency reach new audiences and seeks to "encourage wider use and awareness of multimedia and other informational resources provided by FSIS."

Recent FSIS tweets, or Twitter messages, included food safety tips, descriptions of FSIS videos and podcasts and links to advice on food safety during a weather emergency. Check out and follow the FSIS/USDA Food Safety Twitter stream by going to: http://twitter.com/USDAFoodSafety 

It's time for another Chew on This podcast. This week's topic: Food Safety Across Borders.

More and more people these days want to know where their food comes from. How can we tell if it’s safe? How do we know what country it came from? What does animal identification have to do with the meat, eggs and dairy products that we enjoy? In this new Chew on This podcast, Dr. Barbara Masters, Senior Policy Advisor at Olsson Frank Weeda P.C and former Administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, talks about the safety of food imported into the U.S. and answers questions about labeling and animal identification. Listen to the podcast now.

In case you missed it, the final law on the Country of Origin Labeling program, or COOL, took effect this week. You can read our post on COOL here.

And finally, learn more about the National Animal Identification System, another crucial program in tracking our food supply by going here.

The national salmonella outbreak in February that was tied to the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) has shocked Americans in many ways, but the one that really caught folks off guard was that the peanuts used to make the recalled products were certified as organic. Now, just because a food stuff is labeled organic doesn’t mean it won’t be a part of a recall. In fact, any number of so-called organic products has been part of recalls. But because this recall has been so massive, the next unfortunate victim of the recall might just be the integrity of organic foods and, especially, the organic label.

So, if you try to stick to items labeled as organic, one thing to consider is that an organic certification doesn’t mean the food is safer… it means it’s produced according to the standards set by the National Organics Standards Board.

Organics began as a cottage industry decades ago by a small group of farmers who wanted to explore ways of producing more wholesome, healthier foods. Today, raising and selling organics is big business, and many consumers have shown they’re willing to pay as much as 50 percent more for organic products.

But while organic food is pricy, you shouldn’t assume that paying more for organics means that they are free of pathogens. In fact, it could be just the opposite. For example, organic meats must have little or no exposure to antibiotics, and yet antibiotics are the most effective tools farmers and veterinarians use to control pathogens. That presents a conundrum for anyone purchasing organic meats. (By the way, if you missed our Chew on This podcast All About Organics, now is a good time to listen to it.)

There’s another thing that’s important to keep in mind. Any standard is only as strong as its standard-bearer. Organic foods are inspected by private inspectors who are paid by the organic food producers themselves – the very people they are employed to inspect. In the case of Peanut Corporation of America, one of these private certifiers took seven months from the time he first discovered that PCA lacked a state health certificate to report the problem to the USDA and request that PCA lose its organic label. And, he wrote that report after the national recall had come to light.

Even with an understanding of what organic means, there is room for differences of opinion. For example, some people believe that only organic meats are free of antibiotics. But many vets and farmers would dispute this. Food products that have not been raised organically do not contain antibiotics, either. In non-organic foods, antibiotics can be used to treat a sick animal or to keep diseases from spreading to the other animals. But a withdrawal period assures that the animal has time to metabolize – and make sure the antibiotic is no longer present in the animal – before it is sold for food or its milk is sold for consumption. So, non-organic producers could argue that non-organic milk and meats are also antibiotic free.

This isn’t to say that www.keepourfoodsafe.org doesn’t respect the organic label. Quite the contrary. These labels offer consumers important information. But consumers should educate themselves about what, exactly, that label means. When certifiers do their jobs, an organic label means nothing more than that a food meets a set definition of organic.

There’s one thing we can all agree on: the peanut recall has us all talking about food safety. The average American consumer may have been initially caught off guard by the salmonella outbreak, but you can be sure that it’s made us all more attuned to critical issues that affect the safety of the food we eat. We’ll continue to monitor many of those issues here and, as always, let you know when you can get involved or take action to help keep our food safe.

Today’s news brings word of a new poll showing that Americans are very worried about food safety. The Oregonian sums up the poll’s key findings: “73 percent said they were as worried about food safety as the war on terror, 61 percent rated the food recall process as fair or poor, and 48 percent said they trust the government's ability to ensure a safe food supply.”

These are frightening numbers and once again remind us that we are all deeply concerned with the topics that are the focus of this very site. We’ll continue to keep you posted of ways we can keep our food safe – and safer. In the meantime, make sure you check out our issues and frequently asked questions pages so that you can stay on top of it all.

Being a vegetarian doesn’t necessarily mean that you escape food safety challenges. In this Chew on This podcast, Dr. Tracey DuVernoy, a veterinarian and vegetarian, discusses food safety and health concerns for vegetarians. Dr. DuVernoy explains where contamination comes from and the roles veterinarians play in preventing it. Listen now.

If you missed last month's All About Organic Food podcast, you can listen to it here.

As always, feel free to leave your feedback, thoughts and suggestions for future podcasts in the comment section below.

Americans who look for “buy American” labels might be happy to know that they may soon be able to eat American. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has issued new guidelines that will change the way laws on country-of-origin labeling (COOL) are applied. As a result, you may soon see the words “Product of the U.S.” on all American meats, produce and other foods.

The laws regulating COOL, which apply to beef, lamb, pork, fish, perishable agricultural commodities, and peanuts, initially passed in the 2002 Farm Bill (and expanded in 2008), but legislation in 2004 and 2005 delayed implementation of COOL. Why? It seems these labels are a bit controversial. The USDA Economic Research Service found that “mandatory labels are unlikely to increase food demand and likely will generate more costs than benefits.”

Interestingly, Vilsack’s letter also reverses the Bush Administration’s guidelines on COOL, announced a little more than a month earlier. In one of its final acts, the Bush Administration issued rules suggesting that U.S. meats could bear a “mixed origin” label if they were simultaneously packed with other products that include meat from imported animals. Livestock producers and many state lawmakers from the West, arguing that these guidelines basically gave retailers and meatpackers a free pass to avoid the COOL program, balked at this interpretation and called for the changes that Vilsack announced on Feb. 20. The new program takes effect on March 16… if there are no delays in implementation, which is possible for a program of this size and scope.

What really changes? Well … primarily it’s a marketing issue, as in information on the package. What’s inside the package won’t change. Meats and other foods will continue to undergo the same food-safety inspections under the USDA. But in mid-March you’ll know if the cheeseburger you just grilled really is as American as homemade apple pie (which you’ll also know more about).

In addition to the mandatory labels, the USDA’s guidelines suggest that retailers provide even more information on the label on a voluntary basis. For example, let’s say that grass-fed steak you’re eating was born in New Zealand, then ranch raised in Australia, before being shipped to Canada for slaughter—that should all to go on a label. While this example would be quite a globe-trotting cow, it is not at all unusual, in this age of highly specialized farms, for cattle to be bred on one farm and raised and/or slaughtered on another, sometimes crossing international borders. So this summer you may know more about the steak you’re serving than you’ll know about your guests at the barbeque.

The USDA’s new ruling also changes the Bush Administration’s approach to processed foods, which were excluded from the labeling requirements. Under the new, revised rules, even meat products that have been cured, steamed, grilled, broiled or smoked prior to packaging will require the new labeling.

While the new rules close some of the loopholes that label supporters had been concerned about, there are still some exemptions. For example, restaurants are not expected to label foods, and while bacon will get a label, many other processed foods, like TV dinners or mixed vegetables, are exempt.

The biggest question for America’s agricultural industry is if the knowledge that a steak—or produce or nuts—that originates in the U.S.A. will carry enough weight with consumers—at home or abroad—to justify the expense of the COOL labels. We shall see.